


Pleasure

by Dusk Peterson (duskpeterson)



Series: Master/Other [5]
Category: Northern Corporate Dominion - Remy Hart
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cars, Chauffeurs, Corporal Punishment, Dominance and Submission, Don't Have to Know Canon, Ethical Issues, Friendship, Litfic, M/M, Master/Servant, Rare Fandoms, Romance, Science Fiction, Self-Discipline, abuse issues, don't need to read other stories in the series, servantfic, slavefic, valets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:36:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskpeterson/pseuds/Dusk%20Peterson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>"Halvar leaned forward. His eyes were the color of an arctic sky. 'I am not a fool, Egon,' he said softly, 'so do not treat me as such.'"</b>
</p><p>Egon had a position that won him respect, friends who raised his spirits, and lovers who gave him pleasure. Then a man came into his life who would take all that away from him. If Egon was lucky.</p><p>As a slave, Egon has already reached the highest position he will ever achieve: he is the household's airship chauffeur. Forced to confront the contradiction between his ideals and his behavior, Egon must make a choice between continuing to pursue immediate pleasure or willingly submitting himself to another man for the sake of a higher goal. What Egon does not yet know is that his guide on this journey into the unknown is hiding a secret that will transform both their lives.<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskpeterson/profile#w"><i>Boilerplate warning for all my stories.</i></a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the characters and setting established by Remy Hart in her [Northern Corporate Dominion](http://remyheart.livejournal.com/44337.html) series. They are used with permission of the author - thanks, Remy!
> 
> Also, a special thank you to [Anne Blue](http://slashbluegreen.livejournal.com/profile), who first introduced me and Remy to each other, [back in these days](http://fanlore.org/wiki/MAS-Zine) (link NSFW).
> 
>  
> 
> _Remy's introduction to her series:_
> 
> As government became increasingly dependent on private industry to support society, the corporations began to assert more and more control, and eventually the two became indistinguishable. When the corporate government realized that slavery could be a viable economic solution to the costs of maintaining a workforce, many citizens found themselves reclassified as corporate assets.
> 
> Slaves were not taken from other civilizations through conquest, as in the past, but through more insidious means. Children, as property of their parents, could be sold to pay debts. Convicts became property of the state, and soon filled the factories and assembly lines of the private companies that bought them. Breeding farms, set up in the second generation after reinstitution, turned out enough product to meet an ever-more-voracious demand.
> 
> When humans are seen only in terms of profit and loss, what happens to humanity?

He took a deep breath before knocking. His body was thrumming like a plucked string, vibrating over and over from the rush of beating blood. He tried to tell himself that it was due to fear. He dared not let himself think that it was anything else – God, so much depended on him not thinking about the other thing it might be.

His hand rose of its own accord and he rapped on the door, more softly than he had planned. He heard the voice of permission, muffled by the wood, and then he was ducking his head to step through the doorway and had closed the door behind him. 

The Supervisor did not look up immediately. He was sitting at his desk, frowning over something he read on his datapad. He made a note or two, and then glanced to the side at his communit, carefully shut it down. Only then did he look up at the new arrival. 

At the rise of Halvar's familiar eyes – a chilly blue that seldom varied – Egon felt the thrumming in his body increase. _Damn_ , Egon thought, desperation hardening in his throat. Damn, damn, damn. At this rate, his meeting with Halvar was not likely to last more than three minutes. 

And indeed, the older man was already reaching for the short metal rod that lay on his desk. It was usually in his pocket; Egon guessed that it had been placed in view for his benefit. The sight of Halvar's hand closing round the rod did its work; Egon felt the thrumming of his heart settled down into a series of brief, painful thuds. 

The Supervisor rose from behind the desk, circled round to the front and then settled against the desk, his backside pushing against the pile of plasts awaiting him. Egon kept his gaze focussed on the rod, which Halvar was stroking with his hand. 

"So," said Halvar, "you have finished your work with your new fellow slave." 

Halvar's statements were always exact; Egon knew it was no coincidence that the Supervisor had chosen to use the word "slave" so forcefully. Under such circumstances – with Halvar still stroking the rod in his hand – it was easy enough to turn aside the thought that Halvar too was a slave. 

"Yes, sir," Egon replied, not lifting his gaze. "We seem to have succeeded in teaching him to place thoughts of his duties before all else, so we've fulfilled your instructions to . . . teach him his place here." 

"Mm, yes." Halvar's hand paused upon the rod before resuming the slow stroking. "And did you enjoy raping him?" 

Egon's gaze shot up to Halvar's face before he could stop himself. The Supervisor's eyes were as chill as ever; it was a moment before Egon could pull in enough breath to say, "No, sir." 

"No?" Halvar sounded faintly surprised. "I would have thought you'd have enjoyed that, being pleasured for three months by a young man you once served." 

Egon felt his back straighten; he raised his chin and said quietly, "I like to think you have taught me better than that, sir." 

Halvar said nothing; there was no change in his eyes to indicate whether he was pleased or angry at this response. After a moment Egon added more hesitantly, "He's just a scared kid, sir. Not my type at all, even if I were looking for that. That's not the sort of man I'm drawn to." 

He hoped this would make the right impression. Whether it did, he could not tell from Halvar's expression, but after a moment the Supervisor gave a slight gesture, and Egon came forward. 

As soon as he was within Halvar's shadow, he knelt. He was a head taller than the Supervisor, a fact that became all too obvious when the two of them were standing next to one another. Not that he often stood in Halvar's presence. He lowered his gaze to the floor and waited, concentrating all his thoughts on the hard stone below his knees. 

It was a long wait. He wished he knew what sort of sign Halvar wanted from him, so that he could offer it; it was often hard to tell what the Supervisor was seeking from him, and they had been three months apart. Egon had been angry about that at first – that the need for breaking the spoiled brat who had been tossed belowstairs to them would keep him separated from Halvar. He had taken out his anger on the young man— 

He heard himself say, "I was too hard on Joran, sir. I was angry at him because you ordered me to devote all my efforts to breaking him. It wasn't his fault, but I made him suffer for it." 

He was frozen in the next moment, his gaze returned to the rod in Halvar's hands. In the long run, he knew, he would receive the reward for his honesty. But in the short run— 

Halvar's hand moved, and he set the rod onto the desk. "Yes," he said. "So I heard. Well, I ordered you to break Joran, and whatever your motivations may have been, you succeeded in the task I set for you. Thanks in part to you, he's likely to be ready for service when the Chairman calls for him, which will save all of us in this household from undergoing the wrath of the Chairman. Joran included, I might add. So it's likely that your undue harshness will save him from harder suffering in the future. You understand that?" 

"Yes, sir," he said softly. He understood that very well indeed. 

"Mm." Halvar was silent again for a while, and despite himself, Egon felt the plucking of his bloodstrings begin again. He drove his fingernails into his palms in an effort to drive back the music. 

"And what did you have Joran do for you?" 

Halvar's voice was quieter now; Egon closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten before saying in a steady voice, "I had him serve me with his mouth, sir. I thought that would be least painful for him." 

"I suppose that, as evils go, that was the lesser evil for him." Halvar's voice was detached. "You're a big man, Egon." 

"Yes, sir." He was able to inject a note of genuine regret into his voice. "Far too big for most, I know. It's fortunate that these days I—" 

The thrumming strings went suddenly flat, as though a hand had been laid upon them; he felt coldness enter his body as he realized what he had said. He waited, his breath caught in his throat. 

Halvar said, his voice mild, "Fortunate that you do what, Egon?" 

"Nothing, sir," he said quickly. "Nothing unless my duty requires it of me." 

For a moment all was still; he could hear only the faint sound of the other slaves working elsewhere belowstairs. Then a soft chuckle drifted down upon him, and he felt a hand slide down the back of his bare neck, sending shivers through his body. The strings sang. 

"All right, Egon," said Halvar, his voice filled with amusement. "I've missed you as well – very much so. So why don't you show me what exactly it was that Joran did for you that you disliked so much?" 

It was too much. He bit back the sound rising in his throat, and cursed himself with every curse he knew. He would not ruin this – not today of all days. He would not destroy this by thinking about himself – he would think only of Halvar. Only of Halvar and of the pleasure he could give him. 

That thought he could not have thought seven years ago, before his training.


	2. Chapter 2

He stood motionless, a bulky shape looming over the older man sitting at his desk, examining his datapad. He was taller than Halvar, and stronger. He reminded himself of these facts, though he knew that they were of no relevance. 

It was not the first time he had been called into Halvar's office. He had been sent there many times over the years, at the Chairman's orders. Sometimes the beatings he received at Halvar's hands were merited, sometimes they were not. He took no notice of them either way, nor any notice of the words from Halvar that accompanied the beatings. His mind was on higher matters, and the beatings always gave him the excuse he needed to court the latest of his lovers, showing her his welts and pouring out his sorrowful tale. 

Not that he lacked gratitude for what his lovers gave him. They helped to distract him from the horrors of his life, so he did his best to return the favor – and was successful, he knew. In his ears were still ringing the cries his latest lover had made when he pleasured her. 

Halvar looked up from his datapad. "Sit," he said briefly, and Egon sat in the straight-backed chair opposite Halvar's desk. He suspected that Halvar wanted him seated only because it allowed the Supervisor to stand over him. His theory was confirmed in the next moment as Halvar rose, emerged from behind his desk, and leaned back against the front of the desk, his arms folded as he contemplated Egon. 

"Well," he said finally, "you are fortunate. The Chairman received a good price for Karia from the breeding farm – they took one look at the genetics information from your chip's database and decided that your child and its host were worth buying. They wanted to buy you as well, but they didn't offer the Chairman a good enough price." 

Egon sat immobile, unable to think what to say. That he had escaped being sold to a breeding farm ought to give him joy, he knew – but that he would never see his child, and that laughing Karia would now be condemned to a life of forced mating and endless pregnancies . . . 

"So that matters to you." Halvar's voice was chill. "I had wondered whether it would." 

Egon raised his chin and looked Halvar straight in the eye. "We didn't intend for it to happen." 

"No, I'm quite sure she didn't intend for it to happen." Halvar's voice remained cool, though quiet. "At sixteen, she was young enough to believe you when you told her that you were infertile. I'm only surprised that you have continued to use that tale, since none of your other bed-mates believed it." 

Egon's face grew warm, and he shifted his hands from the arms of the chair to his lap, lounging back in an effort to look relaxed. "I thought it was true. My parents only ever had one child, though they made love often, and they told me that my uncle—" 

Halvar's rod shot out to full length; it crashed down upon the chair arms with a crack like lightning. Egon, who would have fallen out of the chair if the rod had not barred his way, went rigid and pressed himself against the chair's straight back. 

Halvar leaned forward. His eyes were the color of an arctic sky. "I am not a fool, Egon," he said softly, "so do not treat me as such. If _you_ are a fool, and believe the words you are saying, then I suggest that you rapidly educate yourself. You cared not whether you impregnated that girl and ruined her life – you cared nothing for her or for any other woman you have bedded for the past ten years. All you care for is your own pleasure." 

"At least the Chairman has permitted me that much." 

The words had escaped from his mouth before he could pull them back. Halvar looked down at him a moment more before slowly raising the rod from the chair. His wrist flicked; the rod collapsed back in on itself. 

He did not return the rod to his pocket, though; instead he ran a hand slowly across its surface while saying, "So you expect rewards from the Chairman. For what? For the lackadaisical fashion in which you perform your duties?" 

"Maybe." Egon kept his gaze fixed upon Halvar, unwilling to concede him any ground. "Or maybe I'd like payment for the parents he took from me." 

Halvar did not speak for a moment. His office was of spartan appearance – no more than a desk and two chairs – and his personal appearance was likewise simple: scorning the black suits worn by the more privileged slaves of this household, Halvar wore a grey uniform, as though he were a slave just beginning his training. On him, it did not look odd. 

"You blame the Chairman for the loss of your parents." The Supervisor's voice was flat. 

"Who else am I to blame?" The bitterness that Egon had succeeded in hiding until now spilled out of him, like acidic liquid from a poorly tended ionizer. "My parents both served the Chairman with loyalty, and he rewarded that by selling my mother to a household where she'd be beaten or worse, and by driving my father to his death. What justice is there in that?" 

"Justice?" The Supervisor raised his eyebrows, as Egon's father had. "Is that what you seek?" 

Egon gave a short, humorless laugh. "Not justice. Slaves can't expect justice. That being the case, I'll take what pleasure I can, where I can." 

"Interesting." Halvar folded his arms again without releasing the rod from his hand. "How far do you extend this philosophy of taking without giving? To your friends? To your lovers?" 

"Of course not." Egon glared at Halvar, resuming his slouched position. "I always do my best to give pleasure to my friends and to my lovers. I entertain my friends with stories, and my lovers— Well, I give them a different sort of pleasure. Any of them would tell you that." 

"Even Karia?" 

"Especially Karia!" Egon leaned forward, his hands now in fists. "She and I— Not using protection was a mistake, I'll admit that. But I gave her pleasure all the same. Towards the end of each time, when she—" 

He broke off, realizing the futility of what he was saying. As far as he knew, Halvar was completely celibate; if he had had any lovers in his youth, he had given them up at the time he became Supervisor. Halvar had not even participated in the rape fourteen years before. He probably had forgotten what bed-pleasure could be like. 

"Mm." Halvar appeared to contemplate this information, staring down at his rod and lightly touching its surface. After a while he said, without looking up, "Well, your lovers seem to hold a different view on this matter. They regard you, uniformly, as the worst mistake they ever made." 

For a moment Egon was still; then he relaxed further back into the chair, chuckling. "Do you expect me to believe that?" 

"Believe it or not, as you wish. According to one of your lovers, 'When he took me in the store-rooms, while I was supposed to be checking the flour bins, it was as though I was making love to a machine on automatic. His thoughts weren't on me – I'm not sure where they were. I'm not sure whether he has any thoughts, beyond satisfying his body.'" 

His mouth had turned so dry that he had trouble swallowing. He knew whom Halvar was quoting – it was Karia, telling of the day on which he had given her his child. The day on which she had cried his name into his chest, over and over . . . 

"But she enjoyed it," he said, his voice dull. "I _know_ she enjoyed it. She . . . Towards the end . . ." 

Halvar slid his hand around the rod, gripping it tight. "I seem to recall," he said conversationally, "that you were present where you should not have been fourteen years ago, and that you witnessed a certain punishment that took place in the kitchen. Did you happen to notice, on that occasion, whether the slave in question reached orgasm?" 

A heaviness in his throat prevented him from speaking for a moment. "He . . . That is, my father . . . The man being punished was forced .. ." He stopped and tried again. "Even if Karia— That is, she was only one. There were others . . . And my friends. You can't tell me that my friends don't enjoy my company." 

"Ah, yes, your friends. You claim to them that you are a skilled lover – is that not so?" 

His hands clenched once more. "Yes." 

"Prove it." 

He stared up at Halvar's opaque expression, but could think of no better response than, "What?" 

"Prove that you are a passably good lover. I will offer you a choice. You may receive a beating now for the loss of a young slave – and that beating will be consonant with the heinousness of your offense, I can promise you. Or return here tonight before lights-off and prove to me your skills as a lover. If I find that you have told the truth, I will let you go without further punishment. If I find that you have lied, you will receive a beating, though a lesser one than you would receive now." 

"I don't understand the point of this," Egon said slowly. 

"Don't you?" Halvar flicked out the slender rod full length, then pulled it back, as though he were a towtractor hooking a dead aircar. "You were once a hard-working servant – indeed, I had hopes that you would prove as skilled at service as your mother. Then you lost interest in your duties. I had held out hope all these years that, though you were as poor a chauffeur as any household could bear to sustain, you were at least a hard worker in the hobby you had taken up in place of mindfulness to your duties. Now I'm beginning to doubt even that. So prove me wrong." 

Egon was still and silent a full two minutes – not a usual response from him, by any means. Finally he said in an abrupt voice, "Fine. I'll be back here at the end of the evening." 

He stood up and turned. And then his breath whistled out of him as he felt the extended rod land upon his back. He stood motionless, afraid to turn. 

"And when you come here again," Halvar's cold voice said, "you will address me as 'sir' and demonstrate all other proper manners of respect toward your superior. Is that clear?" 

He sucked in a long breath. The rod had landed lightly; he only felt as though one of his ribs were broken. He said stiffly, "Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?" 

"Not until tonight," Halvar said, and pushed him out the door. 

o—o—o

He had never tried to make music with a man. It had not seemed necessary, given the endless supply of women belowstairs. Nor had any of the other male slaves approached him; his reputation was well known, and his tastes were as respected as that of any other specialist. 

The closest he had come to a proposition was when fourteen-year-old Rurik, who had been tagging at Egon's heels since his arrival, tried to give him a sloppy kiss. 

The boy would have been better off kissing a man who had not lost his parents because of Rurik. Egon sent the boy flying against the wall with such force that Rurik's head nearly cracked open; then Egon grimly endured the beating from Halvar that followed. Rurik turned his attention to girls after that and ceased to dog Egon's footsteps, though he could sometimes be seen hovering on the edges of the crowds that gathered to listen to Egon's bed-tales. 

Now, standing before the door to Halvar's office, Egon told himself that giving pleasure to a man could not be so different from giving pleasure to a woman. He could guess well enough why Halvar was doing this. The man must be starved after all these years of forced celibacy; Egon's reputation at lovemaking had intrigued him, and he had leapt at the opportunity to combine duty with pleasure. Hence the tale about Egon as a poor lover, which, as Egon reflected upon it through the day, seemed more and more unlikely. 

The Chairman's demands for his services had left Egon with no opportunity to share Halvar's absurd tale with his friends, though Egon was looking forward to doing so. He could probably create a humorous account of tonight's events as well. And a sorrowful account, for the sake of the women. Thus buoyed with these thoughts, Egon gave a hard knock on the door and followed the order to enter. 

He had expected that Halvar would make some concession to the nature of this night's interview – a cot in the corner, perhaps, or even a bedroll on the floor. Egon would not have been surprised to be handed a bouquet of crocuses upon his entrance. But Halvar sat where he always did, behind the desk piled with plasts, and the only change to the room was a battery-powered lamp shining in the corner. 

Halvar did not look up. He was carefully checking off a list on his datapad, making decisive strokes with his stylus. The rod was nowhere to be seen. Egon came to stand in front of the desk, enjoying once more the feeling of looming over the Supervisor. 

He had arrived with plenty of spare time before bed, in order that both he and Halvar should get a full night's sleep after this passing episode was finished, but the Supervisor seemed disinclined to take advantage of his generosity. Halvar put the datapad aside and began to peck at the keyboard of the ancient communit, his gaze fixed upon the screen. Egon shifted from one foot to another and began to amuse himself with thoughts of the new maid. 

He had reached the point of undressing her when the lights went off. For a moment, plunged into darkness, Egon had the eerie sensation of being trapped in a garage with an aircar about to drive over him. Then his eyes adjusted to the lamplight, and he saw Halvar as he was: a grey-haired man, pushing himself up from his seat with hands grown withered with age. Egon permitted himself a smile. 

Now cloaked modestly by the dark, the Supervisor came over to the other side of the desk; the datachip in the web of his hand glowed faintly. He did not touch Egon but instead leaned his backside against the desk and said, in the curt manner he had, "Proceed." 

Egon's usual manner of proceeding was to shower the woman with words like flower petals. But this did not seem the right atmosphere for courting, and besides, Halvar had already made clear his interest. Best, then, to skip to the heart. Egon stepped forward until he was close enough to grind his groin against Halvar's; then he fumbled a moment with the Supervisor's belt and slid his hand down into the secret parts. 

He encountered nothing but softness; he had forgotten Halvar's age, and he realized that matters would be more complicated with the Supervisor than with the women who squealed at his touch. Well, at least he had a clear indicator of how matters were proceeding with Halvar – the women had not given him that much to work with. He put his hand around Halvar's limp shaft; he could see the glow of his own datachip through the fabric of the trousers. 

"Egon." Halvar's voice was colder than the floor they stood upon. 

"Sir?" The title came automatically to his lips, inappropriate though it was at this moment. 

"Do you truly believe that I receive enjoyment from being groped by one of my subordinates?" 

Egon was about to make a light reply, as he would have if the woman he was with had made a coy protest, but it suddenly occurred to him, looking into Halvar's hard eyes, that Halvar was very likely right. He pulled his hand out quickly and stepped back. 

The Supervisor's belt was unbuckled, his trousers sagged, but nothing in his face made a concession to the occasion. With his voice dropping words like lashes, he said, "One failure. I give you leave to try again." 

Egon rubbed his hands against his own trousers; his palms had become unaccountably sticky. He tried to focus his mind on the task, but it kept slipping away to the music that awaited him once he completed this onerous duty. Thinking again of the maid, he felt himself relax as he realized where he had gone wrong. Foreplay, that was what was needed here. Some of the women he had bedded refused to let matters proceed without that preliminary. Well, if Halvar's tastes were womanlike, Egon could make concession to them. Smiling again, he stepped forward and began to unbutton Halvar's shirt, taking care to let his fingers stroke Halvar's chest in as seductive a manner as possible. Halvar, a head shorter than him, looked up at him silently. 

He tugged the shirttails out of Halvar's trousers, then resisted the impulse to continue where he had left off; instead he reached up and began twisting Halvar's nipples. The women always liked that; he'd have them squeaking before long. 

"Egon." Halvar's voice was, if anything, more chill than before. "I know that you have, in many ways, led a sheltered life. But would you like me to demonstrate to you the pain that human fingers can bring upon the body, by the simple act of doing what you are presently doing?" 

Egon's smile dropped from his face, his fingers dropped from Halvar's body, and he stepped back. He could not raise his eyes from Halvar's nipples, which were swollen and red. The women's nipples had been swollen and red too. His lovers had not told him to stop when he toyed with them like that – or rather, they had, but he had assumed that their protests were part of the coy game they were playing. Surely— 

"Again you fail. I will give you one more chance." 

Egon found that he was beginning to breathe rapidly. He closed his mouth, swallowed to ease the dryness there, and stepped forward. It was all Halvar's fault, he thought desperately, for not establishing the right mood. This scene should have taken place in Halvar's bedroom, not in a stark office with no hint of romance in it. It was as though Halvar was using every tool he could to keep control. 

At that thought, Egon acted on impulse: he seized Halvar's hand and shoved it down into his own trousers. 

He had forgotten to unbutton his belt first; he winced at the feel of Halvar's datachip digging into his belly, then winced again as he realized that Halvar must be no more comfortable than he. 

The Supervisor said nothing. He simply withdrew his hand, placed it in his pocket, and pulled out the rod. 

Egon closed his eyes, cursed softly under his breath, then jerked his eyes open at the sound of the rod flicking open. He tore off his clothes in a fury and left them drooping upon Halvar's straight-backed chair as he leaned over and placed his palms at the short end of the desk. The air was cold and silent. 

He felt Halvar's hand on his neck, shoving him down. "Lie flat," the Supervisor told him. 

He did so, feeling his face burn. Beatings were usually performed on the buttocks or thighs; he had not endured the more painful back-beating since he was a boy in training. He gripped the far edge of the desk and waited. 

The rod, landing on a spot on his upper back carefully calculated to avoid his organs and bones, left him gasping. He heard the voice of Halvar say, "You will be more careful with the Chairman's property in the future," and he knew that it was the voice of memory, drawing from the day he had come close to wrecking the aircar in his youthful awkwardness. 

He had learned much since then. He had, hadn't he? The women all wanted to share his bed – at least, none of them had refused him. Not in any permanent way, at any rate. Of course, he had needed to use persuasion on occasion. Sometimes lengthy persuasion— 

The next blow landed; he bit his tongue and felt blood fill his mouth. He was not going to be able to turn this into an amusing tale for his friends. He thought of their laughter as he recounted to them his exploits in bed, and the frost upon his skin thickened. Had they been laughing at the women? Or had they instead been laughing at him? Had they gone away chortling over his belief that the women were aroused by his nipple-twisting? Did he in fact have any friends among those who listened to his tales? 

A third blow; he whimpered into the wood of the desk. He might be here all night, under Halvar's rod. He had gambled and lost; he supposed Halvar had known he would lose. What point was there in this exercise, then? It could not be for the sake of the punishment – Halvar had told him he would receive a lesser beating if he failed tonight, and the Supervisor had never been known to lie about his disciplines. Did Halvar simply wish to see him humiliated? Did the Supervisor dislike him that much? He had never done anything to directly harm the Supervisor; if even Halvar had come to hate him . . . 

The fourth blow landed; he was sobbing now, and he knew it was not merely because of the rod. He remembered his father in the three months before his death, walking like a dead man in his shattered world. He knew now what his father had felt. His own world was shattered – nothing that he had believed real was true. Not even the music. 

The fifth blow landed, and he smothered a scream against the wood, waiting for the rod to fall again. But then he felt himself being pulled up, forced back onto his feet. Reluctantly he raised his eyes to look at Halvar. 

The Supervisor was slipping the collapsed rod back into his pocket. Somehow, in the short amount of time that the beating had taken place, he had managed to rebutton his shirt and buckle his belt. Not a hair on his head was out of place; he looked as though he had spent the past quarter hour making checkmarks on his datapad. 

"Now," he said, "you will try again." 

Egon, still gasping from the fire upon his back, said in a shaky voice, "I'm finished." 

"You are not. You will continue until you get it right." 

Egon felt his bones grow heavy, as though a weight had been added to them. Finally he said, "You're raping me." 

"And if I am?" Halvar's voice was unperturbed. "What does that tell you?" 

He swallowed the blood in his mouth and licked his lips, which had cracked with dryness. In a monotone he replied, "That I've become a danger. That I must be broken to keep the wrath of the Chairman from falling upon everyone belowstairs." 

Halvar's eyes glittered golden in the dim light of the lamp. "If you understand that, then we are a step ahead of where we stood at the beginning of this day. You may leave. We will discuss this later." 

With shaking hands, Egon pulled his clothes back on; some part of him within whispered, _My uniform should be grey, not black._ He nearly fell to the ground while trying to slip back into his shoes. He proceeded to the door carefully, as though he were a child still learning to walk. 

At the doorway he looked back. Halvar was where he had been before, leaning back against the desk, watching Egon's progress with pitiless eyes. Egon placed a hand against the doorpost to steady himself and said in an unsteady voice, "Sir . . . I was wondering whether I might try again. .. . Please." 

A full minute passed before Halvar responded. "One more try. That's all the time I can spare you; the Chairman wants me in his office early tomorrow morning." 

He walked forward, seeing the lamp sway in the corner of his eye, and knowing that the swaying was his own. When he reached Halvar, he fell to his knees. At first he thought that the fire on his back had reached his legs, but then he realized that, in its weariness, his mind had finally reached its proper conclusion over how to proceed. 

It was all he could do to keep from retching as he opened Halvar's trousers. He had not prepared himself for this – it had not occurred to him that he would need to. Even with women he had never— He closed his old lovers out of his thoughts and tried to concentrate on the matter at hand, but it was hard. He was not only distracted by the piercing ache upon his back; he could not seem to focus his thoughts. His mind would slip away, like a car sliding across the air, and leave him bereft of any ideas of how to proceed. 

Tentatively he took Halvar's shaft into his hands, the light from his datachip showing the shaft's outline. It lay limp upon his palms, unmoved by anything he had done so far. Surely, he thought with desperation, he had the skills to revive it to life. He bowed his head and kissed it. 

The vomit rose to his throat, but he was rewarded by feeling a slight jerk under his lips. He could have cried out in relief, and when he pulled back, it was with greater confidence. He was panicking needlessly, he decided. He knew well enough how to pleasure himself; it could not be different with another man. Indeed, he need not go as far as he had thought a moment before. He placed his hand around the shaft and began to give it the short, hard strokes that always brought him to his peak. 

A minute later a hand circled round his wrist; he gasped at the grip as his hand was pulled away. 

"Enough." Halvar did not sound chill this time, only weary. "I feel as though I'm watching a boy fumble with the gears of an aircar. You missed at least half a dozen obvious signals I sent you that you were proceeding in the wrong manner. A four-year-old has better concentration on his task than you do." 

The words landed as a sixth blow, far harder than the previous ones; he had to close his eyes against what he felt. He allowed himself to be dragged up and pushed toward the door. Behind him Halvar said, "Come here tomorrow, after breakfast. And come prepared with an analysis of what took place tonight, and why it occurred as it did. Then we may be able to make a start at sorting out this mess." 

The Supervisor left Egon in the hallway, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth so that none of the other slaves could hear the sounds emerging there. 

o—o—o

Rurik had the kitchen-girl pressed against the corridor wall the next morning. The girl was squirming in his arms, making soft little sounds as she tried to break free. Rurik laughed at this evident encouragement and nipped at her neck. 

Egon, squeezing past them with a muttered apology to the girl – one of his old lovers – had the uncomfortable feeling that he had just walked past a mirror. He knocked on the Supervisor's door with the softest of thumps. 

Halvar did not make him wait this time. As soon as Egon was seated, the Supervisor said, "Well?" 

"Well." Egon, shifting to keep his smarting back from touching the chair, did not raise his eyes beyond the pile of plasts on the desk. Halvar had stayed in his chair this time, and it was easy to avoid his eye. "Well, sir, I've decided that what took place last night wasn't just." 

Halvar said nothing. He tapped his stylus against the hard wood of the desk as the communit hummed impatiently. 

Egon took a deeper breath. "What you did was rape. All of it, from the very beginning. You offered me the choice of having sex with you or being beaten, and that was as good as no choice at all." 

"Yes," said Halvar, leaning back in his chair. "It was rape. And it was not just, any more than what happened to your parents was just. Shall I tell you how unjust your parents' destruction was, Egon? It was caused by a slave who had grandiose notions of improving the work of the Chairman's servants by taking privileges away from them." 

Egon felt the blood recede from his face. He gripped hard the arms of his chair but said nothing. 

Halvar, tossing the stylus to one side, leaned forward and said, "I had turned forty that year, old enough that I was beginning to think of the day when my age would become a weakness that I must hide from the Chairman at all costs. So I devised a plan to make myself indispensable: I decided to determine what was valued most by the slaves under my charge and to take such things away from them at periodic intervals, so that they would realize the privileges they could lose and would work harder to retain them. I hoped thus to impress the Chairman with my skills and thereby lessen the likelihood that he would dispense with me when I became older. The first person I chose to try my plan on was your father." 

Egon had forgotten how to breathe. He sat motionless, his chest heaving in entreaty to receive more air; his gaze was locked upon Halvar's. 

"My first thought was to send you away for a time," Halvar said. "Your father's fondness for you was obvious. However, your predecessor as chauffeur had just been sent to the Senior Service Center, and the Chairman said that he could not spare you. So I sent away your mother instead. And within two hours of her arrival at the household of the Chairman's sister, the Chairman's nephew had taken a fancy for her and decided to make her his mistress – against your mother's will, I think we can be sure. And so, to please his sister and nephew, the Chairman traded your mother for a young slave he hoped to train to serve his heir. The rest you know." 

Egon's nails were digging so hard now into the wood of the chair arms that he could feel the pain down to his wrists. As a concession to the pounding in his chest, he forced himself to take a shallow breath, and then another. 

"Well?" said Halvar, raising his eyebrows. "Have you nothing to say?" 

"No, sir." His voice sounded as though it had been forced through a lengthy tube. 

"Nor to do?" Halvar's voice was softer now. 

"No, sir." He heard his throat choke on the words. 

Halvar raised his eyebrows again, and Egon said, in the same choked voice, "If I were to give you the death you deserve, nothing would change except that I would die and the Chairman would place another man in your position – probably one who would treat the other slaves worse than you do. That would be ill service to my parents' memory." 

Halvar nodded, as though he had been listening to Egon explain why a certain motor could not run properly. "So," he said, "you and the other slaves have not received justice at my hands, nor is it likely that you will do so in the future, given the constraints I work under. Now that we have settled that matter, we can turn to the question of your position in this household." 

Egon did not speak. His mind's eye was filled with images of his parents as he had last seen them: the meekness of his mother, the weary bleakness of his father. If anyone deserved vengeance, it was they. He closed his eyes, feeling, as he had not felt since his days as a youth, the invisible bindings placed upon him through the simple fact he had been born a slave. 

A noise stopped abruptly; opening his eyes, he realized that Halvar had been speaking. The Supervisor's gaze was narrowed upon him. "Have you been listening to me, Egon?" 

"No, sir," he said hoarsely. 

Halvar said nothing, but his right hand slipped from the desk, as though he were reaching for an object in his pocket. 

With despair coating his voice, Egon said, "Sir, I can't think of two things at once. It's not in me. When I was in my training, this was of advantage to me – I could concentrate all my thoughts on my work, knowing that I wouldn't be distracted by other things. But when I decided to turn all my thoughts to love, I lost the ability to focus upon my work, or even my friends. And my lovers – they were no better off. My thoughts were all on my pleasure, which I mistook for theirs. I missed the signs they were giving me that they were unhappy. And now . . . I can't concentrate on anything but my own pleasure, even if I wanted to. I'm of no use to this household." 

He could not believe, in the moments after he spoke, that he had said the words. He remembered the day he was chosen for chauffeur training; and he remembered that on that same day his father had reached out to hold his weeping mother as his grandparents were taken away by the buyers of the Senior Service Center. His father's voice was husky as he said, "Never allow your master to guess that you have become weak, Egon. Never. Work hard, and make yourself indispensable to the household. And never, ever allow your superiors to know that you cannot do your work." 

Halvar's hand slipped back onto the desk. He contemplated the stylus for a moment, then let it drop, saying, "I'm glad to see that you understand your true worth within this household. That simplifies matters for me." 

Egon watched Halvar rise from the desk, watched him walk to the front of the desk and lean back. Egon's body had gone numb to the tip of every member. He waited, with dull patience, for what would come. 

"You were quick as a boy in your training," the Supervisor said. "Do you think you can be quick at your retraining?" 

Egon raised his head; the hope that clutched at him was painful. "Yes, sir," he said in a throttled voice. 

"Very well." Halvar's voice was brisk. "You began your training as a chauffeur at age fifteen and were permitted to drive the aircars within three years. If you can complete your retraining within that time, I will recommend to the Chairman that you be retained in service. If not, or if you should show lack of diligence in your training, then I will recommend your sale. Does that seem just to you?" 

"I thought you didn't give out justice, sir." His voice was still half-strangled. 

Halvar gave the quickest of smiles; it was like seeing light travel swiftly across a courtyard on a cloudy day. "Not unless my duties permit it. So . . . you are in need of discipline to train your mind to concentrate on the task at hand, and perhaps one day concentrate on more than a single task. Last night you experienced unjust discipline. What would you consider just discipline?" 

"If I were to do the same as last night, only willingly." 

In the silence that followed, there was a knock on the door. Rurik's voice said, "Sir, may I speak—?" 

"No." Halvar did not bother to raise his voice. "I'm busy. Come by later – and if your question is whether you can have another week's supply of protection for your lovemaking, give me a good reason why I shouldn't hand you a year's supply of drugs that cause impotency." 

Egon heard a sudden fit of coughing on the other side of the door; then footsteps faded away as Rurik hastily retreated. Halvar's gaze had not left Egon in all this time. Now he said, "You surprise me. Are you telling me that you enjoyed last night?" 

"Enjoyed?" Egon stared at the Supervisor. "Sir, after I left you, I spent two hours in the bathroom, vomiting—" 

Halvar's expression did not change, but Egon realized, too late, how this must sound. "Sir," he said quickly, "it's not because of you. That is, I didn't find you to be—" 

"I raped you." Halvar's voice was stripped clean to the bone. "Your reaction was natural. Go on." 

Egon took a deep breath and picked his way carefully through the next words. "Sir, for all I care, the Chairman and his sons could die together in a flaming aircar crash." His voice trembled from the fire beneath it, then steadied with the next words. "I don't care whether the Chairman receives good service, but I want to keep my place in this household. I know there are much worse places I could go, and I've lived here all my life. It's my home. And aside from that . . . I don't care what the Chairman thinks of me, but I do care what my friends and lovers think of me. If I have any friends. If I ever have any lovers again. For their sake, I want to learn how to keep my thoughts focussed outside of myself, outside of my own pleasure. And since this trouble all started with me not giving pleasure to my lovers, it makes sense to me that, if I trained myself how to do that – to think of my lover's pleasure rather than my own – then I could learn how to focus my thoughts on any task put before me. Including driving the Chairman to his damned meetings." 

He expected, at the end of this speech, to see the flicker of movement as Halvar extended his rod. But the imperturbable Supervisor said, "The Chairman, you may be interested to know, doesn't give a damn what you think of him. All he cares is that you do your job. If a happy love affair in the future is your motivation for doing your duty, then that will do as far as the Chairman is concerned. As for myself . . . If improving your relations with the other slaves can save me from another evening of comforting weeping women whose souls have been broken by you, or save me from another day of hearing from the men belowstairs how your tedious bragging is driving them to consider plans to strangle you, then I will consider the work needed to retrain you to be worth it." 

Egon felt each word land on his body with all the force of a trunk-sized rod; he shrivelled into himself, and the last of his defiant words died away like fading music. He felt only emptiness within, as though all instruments of song had been withdrawn from him. 

After a minute, Halvar said, "So your plan is to find someone you would dislike making love to – namely me – and to give that person pleasure. Do I understand you correctly?" 

"Sir, I—" He could not speak further; his gaze was upon Halvar's trousers, where he could see the outline of the rod. 

"Your plan is curious," commented the Supervisor. "I can see why you wouldn't choose one of the female slaves, but there must be another male slave in this household with whom you would receive no pleasure in bed. I am the man who raped you, who caused the rape of your mother and the death of your father – why choose me?" 

He closed his eyes and took a moment erasing the image of the rod from his mind before opening his eyes and saying, "Sir, I know that I'm to blame for what has happened in the past ten years. I know that the others here must have sent signals to me to show how much they disliked me. I'm not disputing any of that. But I think . . . I truly think that, if anyone had told me outright that they were sick of me, I couldn't have ignored that. Nobody did. Nobody was that honest with me. Except you. You told me what I've become, and you warned me of the danger I'm in, and you even told me what you'd done to my parents, which you needn't have revealed. Since the loss of my parents, you're the first person who has been completely honest with me." 

For a moment more, Halvar gazed upon him with his opaque eyes. Then he bowed his head slightly, as a slave does to his master. 

"I see," he said. "Well, then, I may tell you that I am likewise impressed by the swiftness with which you have acknowledged your fault. It cannot be easy to admit that you have wasted the past ten years of your life, and you made this concession in the space of a single day. You have saved me a great deal of trouble. So—" 

He rose to his feet, turned to the side, and pulled shut the humming communit. Without looking Egon's way, he said, "We have respect for one another, and that is a good basis for a working relationship. I am willing to take on your training, and I agree that the approach you have suggested – to teach you to willingly do duties that bring you no pleasure – is the right approach. Pleasure, you should understand, is not an evil in itself – indeed, it can be used as a tool to encourage one to do one's duty. When the day comes that you understand the true meaning of pleasure, then you will no longer need to bind your pleasure. However, you are far from that day." 

"Yes, sir," he murmured. He was having a hard time concentrating on Halvar's words; he was trying to imagine the types of service he would be called upon to do, and he was feeling sickness rise in his throat once more. 

Halvar gave him a sharp look, as though he knew that Egon's thoughts had strayed. "Your basic approach is right. However, we will need to find another duty for you than the one you have suggested." The Supervisor's voice turned dry. "If nothing else, I think you have overestimated my ability to take on such a task." 

It was the final blow; Egon felt his throat close in on him and his gaze fell to the ground. "I'm sorry, sir," he whispered. "I didn't think— I'm sorry." 

He heard a step beside him; a hand grasped the hair at the back of his head, forcing him to look up at Halvar. The Supervisor's expression was sober. 

"I am not trying to imply that I spent yesterday night vomiting in a bathroom," Halvar said, "but it is not the sort of thing I could do regularly, even if you were willing. I am undertaking your training because it is my duty, Egon – you understand that?" 

"Yes, sir," he whispered. "I'm sorry I was such a fool—" 

Halvar released his head and waved away his words. "Your skills at identifying your weaknesses and presenting a solution are good," he said. "We will make use of that in your training. You are to be my valet." 

For a moment he was sure he had misheard. "Sir?" he said tentatively. 

"As a form of training. I know that it isn't usual for a slave to keep another slave as his body servant, but the Chairman agrees that you are in need of additional discipline. He says that the market price for chauffeurs is too high at the moment for him to consider replacing you. Of course" – Halvar's voice turned dry again – "you understand that the market may change at any time." 

He nodded slowly. It was coming to him that everything that had happened to him in this room – all of the decisions he had made with pain – had already been made by Halvar before he arrived. Egon had never had any choice at all. 

Yet Halvar had allowed him to think that he had a choice – the Supervisor had allowed Egon to make his painful way to the same conclusions, rather than force him there through a command. Egon took a deep breath and said, "I will be glad to serve you, sir. But I have no training as a valet." 

"Your training will be the discipline. You will come to my quarters each night, no less than an hour before lights-off – I can spare you that much time each day. You will learn how to be a body servant, and with the time left, you will tell me how your day has gone and analyze for me, as you have done today, how you have strayed from your duty and what you can do to prevent it from happening again in the future. And then I will plan your discipline accordingly. That discipline will include the rod – you understand that?" 

"Yes, sir." He gulped in some air and added, "I will be honest with you about my faults, sir." 

"If I thought you wouldn't, then I would not take the trouble to train you. I want you to understand me clearly, Egon: I will not simply have power over the work you do for the Chairman – I will have power over all areas of your life. I will decide who you befriend, who you sleep with, even who you speak to. Until your training is completed and I feel you can be trusted again, control over every aspect of your life belongs to me. Is that clear?" 

"Yes, sir." He steadied his breath before saying, "That's just, sir—" 

"You are wrong. It is not just, but it is necessary. Learn the difference." He picked up his stylus and added, "Now leave me. I need to spend the rest of this morning figuring out how I can juggle the numbers of the belowstairs budget to provide for Rurik's increased need for protection." 

"Yes, sir," Egon mumbled. He picked his way carefully out of the chair, amazed that his back ached no more than it had at the beginning of this interview. When he reached the doorway, he looked back. Halvar was seated behind his desk again, frowning over the datapad. 

"Sir," Egon said in a low voice, "I appreciate your taking this duty on, in addition to all your other duties." 

Halvar did not look up. "The welfare of this household's slaves is always my duty. Egon . . ." 

"Sir?" 

"A suggestion for a start to your retraining. When I was in training myself, one of the first things I learned was that, the more I talked, the less likely I would be to hear what was being said to me." 

Egon opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded his acknowledgment to the remark. He caught the flicker of movement as Halvar glanced up at him; then the Supervisor was absorbed in his work once more, and Egon ducked his head to leave the room.


	3. Chapter 3

Halvar's words replaced his father's as Egon's mantra in the months to come. To tell light-hearted anecdotes was the practice of his life, and he might, perhaps, have failed in his goal to remain mute. But during one of his silent spells, he overheard another male slave expressing to Rurik his thankfulness that Egon no longer monopolized the after-dinner leisure hour with his endless jokes. From that moment forward, Egon was like a stone, sitting in his corner of the kitchen or on his bed in the room he shared with two other male slaves, listening and listening, but never speaking unless he was asked a question.

Within a few months, to his amazement, he had gained a reputation among the new slaves of being silent and stolid. Even the slaves who had known his older self seemed prepared to accept the transformation as something natural, perhaps caused by his added responsibilities as Halvar's valet. Gradually, Egon stopped being badgered for stories of how this or that woman performed in bed, and with this line of gossip ended, the male slaves lost interest in him. A few of them continued to greet Egon with a smile, though, and to ask after his welfare; Egon took hope from that, guessing that he had not alienated these men completely. 

Halvar, during this time, interfered less in Egon's life than he had promised. Every evening, by his own choice, Egon would go directly from the dinner table to Halvar's room; during the hour before Halvar arrived, Egon would smooth and lay out Halvar's pajamas and his clothes for the next day, check that the Supervisor had enough water and other supplies for the night and coming day, and even go so far as to scrub Halvar's floor if the maid had failed to do this to Egon's satisfaction. 

He was equally poor at all his tasks. It was not simply that Egon still had a tendency to let his mind wander from the job at hand; he was quickly realizing how fortunate he had been that Halvar had selected him for chauffeur duties. It was the only work he was truly suited for. 

He was gradually improving in his work, both as Halvar's valet and as the Chairman's chauffeur, but not enough to Halvar's satisfaction; the Supervisor put his rod to use nearly every night, and Egon grew accustomed to spending the day working with aching muscles. He said nothing of this to Halvar, only asked whom he could be permitted to befriend among the other slaves. 

Halvar – who had given no orders to Egon concerning the other slaves – pondered his question for a moment, then suggested, in a mild voice, that the proper question to ask when embarking on any enterprise was not "how" but "whether." 

Egon gave some thought to this the next day, while tending to the aircar, and as a result of his ponderings nearly poured a jug of fertilizer into the car's lubrication tube. That gave him the answer he needed. He was having a hard enough time concentrating on serving two masters, the Chairman and Halvar. If he added on duties toward a friend, he would lose any ability to do his work. Friendship might be possible some day, but not yet. 

He needed no orders from Halvar to stay away from the women. If he had ever tried to befriend any of the female slaves, matters might have been different, but as it was, he kept well clear of them, in anticipation of the day when he could be trusted once more with a love affair. 

After a few weeks, he began to realize that staying away from women required no effort on his part, even as far as the new slaves were concerned – none of the women came near him. By eavesdropping on the women's gossip, he learned with horror that one of the first pieces of advice that new female slaves were given was to keep clear of him. Even after all these months, his name was still a nightmare to the female slaves. 

He spent that night with his pillow pressed hard against his mouth, trying to muffle the sobs emerging there so that the slaves who shared his room would not hear. By the time the lights came on in the morning he had reached the bleak conclusion that the women were right: he could not be trusted in matters of love, not now, not in the future. His drive to please himself was too strong; anyone who fell in love with him would be too vulnerable if he failed. He could not expect his lover to take a rod to him if he was selfish toward her. 

That night he asked Halvar, as he was helping him into his pajamas, whether the Supervisor believed it would be dangerous for him to continue to engage in self-pleasure. It was not a question Egon had dared ask before: during these weeks of forced celibacy, self-pleasure had been his only outlet for all the frustration a man might be expected to feel if he must abruptly give up ten years' worth of nightly lovemaking. 

Halvar said nothing until Egon had helped him into bed. Then he suggested, once more mildly, that the easiest way to decide whether to undertake any action in life was to judge the effect it would have on one's duties. 

Egon took this advice, carefully noting how he performed on the week when he pleasured himself at night and on the week when he did not. The answer was clear: when he did not permit himself a sexual outlet at night, he was inclined to enter into dreams during the day about women he was attracted to. With relief, Egon decided that it would be in accordance with his duty to continue the nightly sessions of self-pleasure that were now, in fact, his only source of pleasure in life, other than his grim satisfaction that his work was improving. 

The first anniversary of his new training arrived. It came during a period difficult for Egon: he did not yet have the strength to improve his concentration without Halvar's help, and Halvar was often busy now. The Senior Service Center was sending buyers to the household every week. 

The Chairman had decided that his youngest son deserved an expensive valet, and in order to pay for this, he was selling off any slave he deemed too old or crippled to do his or her work. If the Chairman had done so on a single day, this would have been bad enough, but he was making his choices slowly, like a boy deciding which flies to swat. Every week the buyers would come and one more slave would disappear, bound for the Senior Service Center. 

What happened when the slave reached there, no one truly knew, for the masters were close-lipped about the fate of slaves too old to do their jobs properly. There were rumors, though; one was that the slaves' datachips were removed from their hands upon arrival. It did not take much imagination to guess what would happen thereafter. 

Belowstairs, during these weeks, was filled with slaves weeping for the loss of family and friends, while any remaining slave who was over the age of fifty walked around with an expression like a prisoner facing execution. Halvar, age fifty-one, appeared composed, but he was kept busy preventing the other slaves from beating bloody the new valet, who had finally arrived. 

The valet was quiet and well trained; unlike Rurik, he expressed regret that his arrival had come at the expense of other slaves' lives. After one bad incident, the tension between him and the rest of the belowstairs household gradually eased. If nothing else, no one wanted to risk angering the Chairman's youngest son by attacking his valet. 

Privately, Egon wondered how long the son's good fortune was likely to last. Egon's first lover, fifteen years before, had been a sweet, gentle slave-girl who was so innocent that she blamed herself rather than Egon's size when their intercourse tore her open. When she gave birth to a boy nine months later, Egon had spent some time wondering whether the boy was his. He thought not; the boy too closely resembled the Chairman, a fact that the Chairman was said to delight in. He had installed the son of his slave abovestairs, and the boy – by all accounts a likeable but spoiled child – appeared to take it for granted that he would remain up there. Egon, whose father had told him tales of how other masters treated their slave-puppies once they grew beyond the stage of being cute, envisioned what lay ahead in Joran's future and felt a twinge of sympathy for the boy. 

It occurred to him, several hours later, that a year ago he would not have concerned himself with another person's future. He was learning to think of things besides his own pleasure. His soul soared, and he entered the garage in high spirits. 

And stopped dead in the doorway. Sitting in the aircar, clothed in a black suit, was a youth nearly half his age, toying with the buttons on the data panel. He looked up at Egon and grinned. 

"Who are you?" Egon asked hoarsely. 

"I'm the new chauffeur," the youth responded brightly. "Who are you?" 

Egon turned and left without a word. 

His first thought was to kill himself. It was a natural idea; he would be following in the footsteps of his father, whom he admired. Instead, he spent the next hour crouched over the toilet in the communal bathroom belowstairs, retching out his breakfast. At the end of that hour he knew that suicide was not an option. He might have managed it a year before, but since then he had come to realize the consequences of his actions on others, and he knew that Halvar would receive the blame for his loss. So, still shaking with sickness, he went to Halvar's office to ask him what he should do. 

The Supervisor was mercifully quick in giving him the facts. "The Chairman was not displeased with your progress," he said, "but he has decided that it is time he got a new chauffeur in any case. Your reflexes are not as quick as they were when you were younger." 

Egon, sitting in his usual chair, said nothing. _Work hard, and make yourself indispensable to the household. And never, ever allow your superiors to know that you cannot do your work._ It was advice he had squandered. If he had worked hard all his life, he might have kept his position for another two decades, perhaps three. Good chauffeurs were valuable property. As it was, he had offered the Chairman the opportunity to remember that he was thirty-two, past his prime as a servant. 

He asked in a low voice, "Am I to be sold, sir?" 

Halvar, who had been standing against the desk and fiddling with his stylus, carefully put the slender wand aside. "No," he said. "I told the Chairman that, due to my age, I can no longer run the belowstairs household alone. You are to become my assistant." 

The house was quiet. Further down the hall, the sounds of clattering pans could be heard from the kitchen; further still, an inconsolable slave was sobbing. Egon stared up at Halvar, forgetting to breathe. 

He knew why Halvar had done this, of course. It was the Supervisor's way of atoning for what he had done to Egon's parents. But even so . .. _Never, ever allow your superiors to know that you cannot do your work._ Halvar must know that as well as anyone there. He, like any other older slave, must have been holding his breath during these weeks, praying that his age would not be remembered. Indeed, Halvar's interference with Egon's parents showed how long this had been a worry to him. 

And amidst all of this – amidst the weekly sales of slaves deemed useless for further life – Halvar had gone to the Chairman and pointed out his age. In order to save Egon. 

"Oh, sir—" Egon whispered, and then, unable to think of anything more to say, he slipped out of his seat. 

That was the day on which Egon first willingly knelt to Halvar. It seemed natural at the time, even though he had never seen anyone do this: under Halvar's benevolent rule, such things did not take place belowstairs, and it had been centuries since masters had demanded this gesture from their slaves. Halvar would never have asked it of Egon. That was part of the reason Egon did it. 

Halvar accepted Egon's kiss on his hand with no comment, nor did he indicate, in the months to come, whether he was pleased or displeased when Egon continued to kneel to him in private, at whatever moments seemed appropriate to Egon. It was often hard to tell whether Halvar approved of his actions. But one thing was certain: in the months to come, Halvar used his rod less frequently, and when the rod was used, Egon welcomed the pain, as a way to help him be a better servant to Halvar. 

o—o—o

One year later, as Egon was passing the kitchen, he heard the kitchen-girl humming and he fell to his knees, weeping. 

It took him a while to figure out why; for one panicky moment he thought he had returned to his obsession with love, though his fantasies about women had become less frequent. The truth behind his weeping was more complex: as a child, the only music he had heard, other than the tuneless humming of slaves at work, came from the beautiful notes emitted by aircars as they hummed their way down the road. A year had passed since he had heard that music. 

If his work as the Supervisor's assistant had proved satisfactory, perhaps the loss would not have been so great. But he was even less suited for this work than he was to valet Halvar. The Supervisor needed no help; the very act of telling Egon what he wanted done took him longer than to accomplish the task himself. Nor would the other slaves follow Egon's orders, unless they believed the orders to come from Halvar. It was clear to them, as it was to Egon, that his position was purely a nominal one. 

Halvar, noting the situation without need for commentary from Egon, did not order the slaves to obey Egon. Instead, he changed Egon's position. 

The first thing he did was to persuade the Chairman that he needed a night chauffeur. This was also a nominal position, for the Chairman and his heir rarely went out at night, preferring to stay up long hours in the household library, working at their business. Nor was the youngest son inclined to take advantage of Egon's services; he preferred to race around each evening in the sports-car his father had given him on his fifteenth birthday. Occasionally, though, the boy would get so high while visiting a pleasure club that Egon would be woken from his sleep to drive the boy home. On those occasions, as the beautiful notes hummed out of the aircar, Egon would glance back at the sleeping boy, drool seeping from his open mouth as he lay senseless in the back seat. Egon would have to resist the impulse to shake Joran awake and say, "Make yourself indispensable abovestairs, before it's too late." 

He did not say that, of course; to do so would to be risk angering his master's son and losing what remained to him. For what remained had become a prize indeed: Halvar had made Egon his full-time valet. 

Whether Halvar had discussed this with their master, or whether he had simply taken advantage of the Chairman's lack of interest in belowstairs events, Egon never knew. Nor did he know why Halvar had chosen for this position the man who must surely be the worst-trained valet that had ever passed through this household. Egon, in a frenzy of fear that his lack of qualifications would disappoint the Supervisor, proceeded to put every blood-drop of strength he had into improving Halvar's life. He served Halvar at table, ignoring the raised eyebrows and sniggers from the other slaves, who were accustomed to seeing only the lowliest slaves serve belowstairs. Using the books Halvar lent him, he painstakingly taught himself to read so that he could bring urgent plasts to Halvar's attention. He redecorated Halvar's office and bedroom, retaining the spartan features Halvar evidently liked, but ensuring that small comforts, such as water dispensers, were close at hand. And one cold winter day, shaking down to his toes, Egon requested audience with the Chairman and told him that he believed a man as indispensable as Halvar deserved a private bathroom. 

After listening to Egon explain how much time Halvar wasted each week while waiting to use the communal bathroom belowstairs, the Chairman approved the plan and put Egon in charge of overlooking the reconstruction of Halvar's quarters. This turned out to involve more jackhammering and sawdust than Egon had anticipated, and Halvar often ended the day by waiting in line to use the communal shower so that he could wash off the dust. But he said nothing about this to Egon – gave no indication as to whether he was pleased or displeased by his valet's interference. Provided that Egon did his duty, Egon understood, Halvar would not comment. For to do so might raise the danger that Egon worked for the pleasure of hearing Halvar's praise rather than for the duty itself. 

Despite this, Egon felt a happiness growing within him over these months. He was doing tasks that went against his natural liking, and he was doing them without complaint and with moderate success. Slowly, slowly, he was learning how to place duty over pleasure. 

There were times, when he was undressing for the sake of Halvar's occasional beatings, when he felt the Supervisor's eye upon him, and an uneasiness entered into him. The uneasiness grew slowly over the months, though he dared not speak of it to Halvar. Egon had grown so used to remaining silent in Halvar's presence that even bringing an important matter like this to his attention seemed an imposition of the Supervisor's time. And so matters remained, until the night when Egon came to Rurik's bed after lights-off. 

o—o—o

It had been Halvar who had suggested that Egon's training had reached the point where it would be both safe and wise for him to befriend one of the other slaves. The Supervisor had left the choice of a friend to Egon, and Egon had picked Rurik, for the simple reason that Rurik was the person he least wanted to befriend. 

It had still not occurred to Rurik, after all this time, to apologize for what had happened to Egon's parents. Other than enduring the younger slave's obliviousness, Egon learned with relief that his duties toward Rurik would not be as unpleasant as he had anticipated. Rurik had grown into a good-natured young man; though inclined to let his thoughts dwell on the pleasures of the bed, he was amiable in his dealings with other slaves. He tried at first to coax Egon into telling more of his humorous bed-tales – evidently the fondest memory that Rurik had of his childhood – but accepted Egon's explanation that it would be unwise for him to return to the hurtful gossip he had told back then. After that, Rurik changed his goal somewhat: he praised Egon's skills as a storyteller at such length that Egon began to imagine that the day might come when he could put his old talent to a better use than he had in the past. 

It was not Rurik he wished to gift with his tales, though. He was thinking of that on the night that he roused Rurik from bed to ask him to help clean the Chairman's aircar, which Joran had vomited upon while being driven back from a pleasure club. 

Rurik grumbled but came willingly; as valet to the Chairman's heir, he seldom had the opportunity to go to the outer buildings where the garage was kept. As Egon pulled the electrostat chargers out of a storage bin, Rurik lifted from the car's back seat the plast containing the draft of the Chairman's annual speech to the CybEngSys board, which had taken the fullest force of Joran's vomiting. 

"Somebody's going to get a whipping," Rurik predicted, carefully depositing the report on the ground. 

"Not Joran," replied Egon, handing him the chargers. "His father never punishes him." 

"Not _yet_ ," Rurik said with significance. He looked down at the small magnetic spheres in his hand and said, "Why, lover! I just _knew_ you'd buy me these one day." 

Egon smiled as he released the lock that pulled back the roof of the aircar. Rurik's flirting, he knew, was purely habit; his romantic attentions had turned to another unobtainable goal, Joran's valet. "Put them around the mess," Egon told Rurik. "Attach them anywhere where there's metal." 

Rurik followed his instructions, saying, "Did Halvar give these to you? Does he put these up your ass, or does he consider them a poor substitute?" 

"Keep your mouth clean," Egon warned him, but without heat. Keeping his mouth clean was an impossible task for Rurik, if only because it was forever buried in the flesh of his latest lover. 

"I mean it, Egon." Rurik's voice was earnest as he looked up from where he was attaching one of the magnetic balls. "What _does_ Halvar make you do for him? You're so close-lipped about your service to him." 

"Rurik, stop it," Egon said uneasily as he slipped into the front seat and flipped open the drive switch. "I'm his valet, nothing more." 

Rurik gave a snort that needed no additional commentary. 

Egon sighed and looked back at Rurik, who was leaning over the vomit in the back seat, smirking. "Rurik," Egon said in a sober voice, "have you been telling the others that I'm Halvar's lover?" 

Rurik snorted again. "Everyone knows that you serve Halvar. Everyone knows that you stopped fucking women the day you began serving Halvar. Do you think I need to be the one to draw the obvious conclusion?" 

Egon remained still a moment. Then he shoved back the drive switch with a bang that made the whole aircar shudder. 

"All right," he said, turning round to face Rurik again. "This is the truth. Most of it I'm depending on you to spread round to the others, so that these rumors will stop. You have enough sense to know which parts shouldn't be spread." 

Rurik nodded, evidently pleased to be entrusted with Egon's secrets. One of Rurik's more unlikely gifts was that he was close-lipped to the extreme as far as friends' confidences were concerned. Egon remembered that Halvar had mentioned this as a reason why he approved of Egon's choice of a friend. 

The other reason had been that Halvar trusted that Egon would have a good influence over Rurik. Egon had lived on that praise for weeks. 

By the time he finished, Rurik, who was lounging upon the trunk of the aircar, had begun to frown. "Oh, Jesus," he exploded when Egon was through. "Egon, don't tell me you're _that_ naive." 

He had on his world-weary-at-twenty-four expression that always made Egon laugh. Egon controlled his smile and said, "Take your mind out of the lower edge for a moment, Rurik. There are people in this world who do things out of duty." 

"Which duty? Ordering you to strip naked so he can beat you? Making you take his clothes off each night? Letting you kneel down so that your face is next to his cock? You say you've even _bathed_ him." 

"You've bathed the Chairman's heir." 

Rurik snorted again. "As though he'd ever take any interest in a slave. But Halvar . . . Christ, man, he's had a cold bed for over thirty years, and then you come along. Strong, good-looking— Don't deny that. I'll bet that if you visited him at night, you'd find him pumping with his hand, fantasizing about you." 

Egon turned back to the data panel, which was softly glowing in the dim light of the garage, and re-opened the drive switch. "Get off the car, Rurik; you're too heavy." He waited until the other slave had clambered off, then said, without looking round, "What if he is? Would that be so terrible?" 

Rurik came round to the side of the car, shaking his head. "Egon, you've had it too easy, that's your problem. If you'd lived in another household . . . You can't let anyone take advantage of you, Egon; you don't know what that could lead to. Look at the situation you're in: today Halvar is exploiting you in his mind for his sexual pleasure. Tomorrow he might decide to turn fantasy into reality. You're a wire-width's span from rape." 

"Stand back," Egon said, his eyes on the data panel. "You'll get your feet burned if you stand that close to the ionizers." 

Rurik stepped back, saying, "You're not listening to me. It's that damned single-centered mind of yours. Egon, get your thoughts off Halvar for once—" 

"Here." Egon finished programming the charge detonator and flipped it into Rurik's hands. "Keep that pointed toward the car." He pushed the drive switch, and the car sprang upwards, cushioned by air and singing its song. Egon put his foot on the brake, then pressed hard on the accelerator. 

Over the roar of music, Rurik shouted, "Egon, you're in danger! You're in the hands of a sexual predator! He's abusing you already—" 

The detonator beeped; Egon let the brake go and roared forward a car's length before cutting the drive and letting the car abruptly drift to the ground. In the mirror he could see the vomit, which had sprung into the air at the electrostat's detonation, fall to the ground where the car had been. 

Rurik came over and examined the back seat. "Looks good," he reported. 

"There's still some under the driver's seat," Egon said. 

"Nobody can see the filth there, so it doesn't matter. —What's wrong?" 

"Nothing," said Egon.


	4. Chapter 4

He sat in the Supervisor's office the next afternoon, wishing he hadn't worn his black suit that day.

Ordinarily during the daytime he wore a grey uniform, not so much to model himself after Halvar as to indicate the lowly status he had willingly taken upon himself belowstairs. Today, however, he had served at table abovestairs. This had been by his own request; he had hoped to learn more that would improve his work as Halvar's valet. 

Five minutes into the meal, with his mind momentarily distracted by thoughts of the previous evening's conversation, he had dropped the tray holding the main course; the sauce from the meat had spattered onto the wallpaper in a manner that no electrostat chargers could cure. The sauce had also spattered onto the Chairman. Joran, who was still recovering from a hangover, had covered his head with his arms and moaned from the crash. 

Egon knew how he felt. He shifted in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position that would ease the aching in the back of his thighs. 

Halvar had put his rod away. He leaned back in his chair and said in a terse manner, "Well? If you have something more to say, then say it; I have work to do." 

Egon passed his tongue over his lips. "Sir, it has been nearly three years since my training with you began." 

"Yes?" Halvar's voice held nothing but impatience. 

"You said at the beginning of the training that you would recommend my sale if I were not fully trained in three years. I think . . . I know that I will not be ready at the end of three years, sir." 

Halvar glanced at his datapad, made a note, and said without looking up, "I am aware of that fact. The three years were intended as a goal for you, nothing more – a way to jumpstart you into moving forward as quickly as possible. To train oneself to put duty over pleasure is far harder than learning to drive an aircar. I am willing to continue your training as long as is necessary." 

"Thank you, sir," Egon murmured. He shifted again, feeling the rough fabric of his trousers rub at the raw flesh. 

Halvar looked up from the datapad. "Now, what do you really want?" 

"Sir?" 

"Egon, in one respect you are extremely easy to train: it is always clear when your mind is not on the matter at hand. Under ordinary circumstances, the words I spoke before would have had you on your knees. Something more important is worrying you. Out with it." 

Egon licked his lips again, felt the burning upon his flesh. "It's about a conversation I had with another slave yesterday evening. A slave I met in town," he added quickly. He hoped this fib would pass inspection; Halvar knew that Rurik was Egon's only confidant within the household. 

Halvar said nothing, nor did he speak as Egon, stumbling, recounted a cleaned-up version of the conversation. When Egon was through, the Supervisor said in the same dry voice as always, "So you believe that I have been using your service to me as fuel for my sexual fantasies." 

"No, sir." 

Halvar dropped the stylus in his hand and narrowed his eyes. "No?" 

"No, sir, I don't believe you'd ever go against your duty. It just seemed to me that it would be understandable . . . Well, not understandable but possible . . . Something like that could happen to someone . . . I mean, if his mind was always focussed on the other person . . ." 

Halvar rose from his seat and placed his palms upon the desk. Leaning forward, he said, "Egon, are you saying what you appear to be saying?" 

Egon stared at the floor, mute. 

"How long has this been taking place?" Halvar's voice was soft, which sent shivers across Egon's skin. 

"Three months, sir. . . . No, two years." 

"Three months or two years? Explain yourself." The Supervisor's voice remained as low as a murderous aircar creeping forward for the kill. 

o—o—o

It had begun, in a certain fashion, on the day Egon first knelt and kissed Halvar's hand. There had been a change after that, though it took him time to recognize what it was. All that he knew was that he found it easier than he ever had before to undertake his duties. 

Gradually he realized he had acquired a strong desire to please Halvar. Before, his only goal had been a far-off hope that some day he should again have friends. It had been a distant dream, one that was hard to remember when he was on his knees, scrubbing the floor of Halvar's bedroom. 

But now he had an immediate goal: to please Halvar. Whether he succeeded he never knew, but just the thought that he might be succeeding drove him through the pain and weariness of his disastrous time as Halvar's assistant and his less than satisfactory time as night chauffeur and valet. 

He had not forgotten what Halvar had once said about pleasure becoming a tool for duty, and he was pleased to know that he had reached that stage. He said nothing about this to Halvar because to have done so would have seemed like praising himself for his own progress; besides, he took it for granted that this was part of Halvar's plan. He supposed that Halvar thought he would eventually turn his pleasure at serving toward his master abovestairs, the Chairman. Egon knew this would never happen; Halvar was as much a master as he wanted. 

He was always careful to keep away from thoughts of pleasure during his time of duty; he still had not learned the trick of focussing on two tasks at once. But at night he would think often about Halvar and feel pleasure that he was able to serve the Supervisor. 

He rarely thought of women at night now. He kept up the sessions of self-pleasure once or twice a week, more out of a sense of duty than anything else; memories of his old lovers were fading, and even in his fantasies he could not persuade himself that he would ever be able to give pleasure to a woman. He still hoped for friends, but future lovers were an impossibility. 

It was thus a shock to him, one night toward the end of his third year of training, when he was brought short during a session of self-pleasure by the realization that he was imagining himself with Halvar. 

The panic he felt then was so sharp that he spent the next three hours closeted in the bathroom, until Rurik came banging on the door and asked him whether he was finished sucking his lover. Egon emerged from the bathroom wet with sweat and lay sleepless for the rest of the night in his bed. 

By lights-on in the morning, he had decided that matters were not as serious as he had thought. Halvar had given him permission to use pleasure as a tool for duty, and this was nothing more than another form of duty-focussed pleasure. It had no relation to reality; Egon did not for a moment believe that he could actually bring sexual pleasure to Halvar. It was simply a fantasy, as his thoughts of pleasuring women had been, and if Halvar had known that he was assisting Egon in keeping to his duties, surely he would not have minded having his image used in such a way. 

The next night, with great trepidation, Egon allowed himself to dwell on the image that had captured him the night before: himself taking off Halvar's clothes, as he did every evening, then kneeling before the Supervisor and kissing him, but it was not his hand he kissed. In his fantasy, Halvar wrapped his hand around his valet's head and proceeded to pleasure himself upon the servant he valued so much. . . . 

By the end of the week, Egon's mind had performed a full repertoire of acts by which he could serve Halvar with his body. Always, when he imagined Halvar's withered hands upon his body, or Halvar's dry voice speaking his thanks for Egon's service, Egon's body would explode in a crescendo of song beyond anything he had known during his years of lovemaking. 

In the daytime, Egon was relaxed and able to put his mind easily to his tasks. This seemed justification enough to continue, though uneasiness continued to grip him, especially on the rare moments during the day – such as when he stripped in Halvar's presence – when memories of the fantasies would come to him. Yet he felt even more uneasy at the idea of turning to Halvar for advice. 

And then, in an evening conversation, he had come to realize, with dull sickness, that he was exploiting Halvar in a manner akin to rape. 

o—o—o

"I'm sorry, sir." Egon's voice broke on the words. "I ought to have known I should not have undertaken any new discipline without your word. I ought to have known I was using you. I have treated you as I did the women, for my own pleasure—" His throat closed upon him, and he could speak no more. 

His gaze was lowered, but at the edge of his vision he could see the feet of Halvar as he stood motionless against the front of the desk. "Well," said the Supervisor finally, "you have driven to a dangerous curve, chauffeur. One that threatens your very soul. We both have." 

"Yes, sir," said Egon in an automatic manner; then the final words that had been spoken reached his ears. He raised his eyes. 

Halvar's gaze had turned away from him. The Supervisor was staring at the far corner of the stark room, where nothing lay but shadows. His hands were empty. He said, without looking Egon's way, "This began as a duty for me. I would have you understand that." 

Egon swallowed, but his mouth remained dry. 

o—o—o

It had begun as a duty for Halvar, a duty he had undertaken on many occasions over the years. It was one of the more pleasant parts of his work: to guide an ill-disciplined slave into learning self-control and self-command. Always, on the occasions when he was successful, Halvar was left with the mild satisfaction of a job well done. 

What he had not counted upon was Egon's fervency. Egon's habit of going beyond Halvar's commands to undertake additional duties, his clear eagerness to obey, the trouble he took to soften the sharp edges of Halvar's life . . . And then had come the day when Egon had adopted, of his own will, the ancient and beautiful gesture by which a servant may show his obedience and gratitude to a beloved master. 

It was too much. Halvar was used to being obeyed from fear or custom; nothing had prepared him for devotion. He took refuge in silence, watching Egon's daily rites of fealty and wondering where this would lead. 

Halfway through the second year of Egon's training, Halvar realized that his feelings for his charge had gone far beyond what was proper for a Supervisor to feel toward a slave under his care. He had gone immediately to the Chairman and confessed his misdoing, offering to resign his post and even to accept being sold from the household. 

The Chairman, for all his faults, could be a generous man – or at least one who wanted to deal as little as possible in belowstairs matters. He told Halvar that he saw no need for punishment and that he trusted his slaves' Supervisor to handle the problem in whatever manner he saw fit. Then the Chairman made clear that he had no wish to be bothered again with tales of slaves' crushes. 

Bereft of advice, Halvar did his best to look at the matter with an objective eye. He could end Egon's training or hand him over to another man to be trained – yet it was clear that Egon's pleasure at serving Halvar was thrusting him up to heights he might not otherwise reach. Better, Halvar decided, that Egon should continue as his valet. He was unlikely to guess what the Supervisor's feelings were for him, and this being the case, Halvar's secret torment could do the younger man no harm. 

That Egon might develop such feelings himself never occurred to Halvar. 

o—o—o

"And so," said Halvar quietly, his gaze finally turned to Egon, "we are both come to a serious curve in your training. If we do not take care, we are likely to crash off the road altogether." 

Egon remained silent, an act that was as natural to him now as breathing. He remembered the Supervisor as he had first envisioned him: a frail, defenseless man. Then that image had been replaced by a far different one: of a man as hard as the rod he wielded. 

Both images, it seemed, had been right. Struggling with the double vision that he had never mastered, Egon nearly missed Halvar's next words: "Do you have any advice on how we should proceed?" 

The Supervisor was watching Egon with such intentness that Egon guessed that his question was no mere training device. "No, sir," Egon said softly. Then he added, as he always did, "I'll do whatever you advise." 

Halvar appeared to think for a moment; as he did so, he slipped from his pocket the collapsed rod and fondled it. At the old, familiar gesture of authority, Egon felt himself relax. 

"You do not wish to be released from my training," Halvar said. 

Egon shook his head. "Not unless you wish it, sir. Today's horror abovestairs was all the sign I needed that I still have far to go in learning to focus my thoughts on my duties." 

Halvar tapped the rod slowly against the desk. "So you will follow my discipline, no matter what it is." 

Egon nodded, a sphere growing in his throat. 

Halvar leaned forward, his grip tight about the rod. "Suppose," he said, "I requested – not ordered, but requested – that you put aside all inappropriate thoughts of me. That you never again thought of me in such a fashion – or, if you found it impossible to return to your old feelings toward me, that you not think of me at all. That you treat me as though I were a communit delivering orders. Would you do that?" 

Egon stared at his lap. He knew his answer, but it was as hard to form the words as if he were an elderly slave who had been asked by a buyer of the Senior Service Center, "Will you come with me, please?" 

"Yes, sir," he whispered. 

"Why?" Halvar's voice was sharp. 

"Because you asked it of me, sir." 

He looked up in time to see Halvar close his eyes and sigh deeply, slipping the rod back into his pocket. Too late, Egon recognized the nature of the Supervisor's test. Try as he might, though, Egon could find no way around the paradox: he would attempt to put aside his love of Halvar, but only out of love for Halvar. 

Halvar turned away and spent a moment leafing through the plasts on his desk; the work orders were piled high, awaiting his attention. After a while he turned back and said, in a voice as decisive as before, "Very well. I am going to teach you how to experience pleasure." 

Egon felt his blood leap, as though it were bursting into song; he forced back the feeling with desperate vigor. "Sir," he said steadily, "I thought that my training was to teach me to do my duty, without thought of my own pleasure." 

"Indeed. The trouble is that, as you have already discovered, a duty faithfully followed eventually becomes pleasurable. That is why you are in danger: you have begun to experience pleasure, but you have not yet learned how to hold two tasks in your mind at once. Ultimately, whether you had developed these feelings for me or not, you would have undergone a struggle as thoughts of pleasure at your duty increasingly pressed themselves upon you during your hours of duty." 

Egon nodded; he could see at once that the Supervisor was right. For now, he had been able to confine his thoughts of pleasure to the night, but as they grew stronger he would not be able to do that. 

"So," said Halvar, "this offers us an opportunity – a dangerous opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless – to teach you to experience pleasure at the same time you are undertaking your duties. There are various approaches we could take in teaching you how to hold two tasks in your mind at once, but the convergence of our changed feelings for one another determines the path we will follow. From now on, you will serve me in bed." 

"Yes, sir." His voice was for from steady this time; he felt as faint from the surging song as though Halvar had beaten him for an hour. 

Halvar gave him a narrow look. "This is a discipline," he said in a hard voice, "and you will treat it as such, or you will receive the appropriate punishment. When you serve me, all your thoughts will be on your duty – all of them. If I see any sign that your thoughts are turning to your own pleasure, you will be punished. Is that clear?" 

"Yes, sir." The song had not utterly disappeared, but it was considerably muted. He felt chill with disappointment and with fear that he could not obey this order. 

Halvar waited a long moment, as though trying to assess whether Egon's reply had been truthful. Then he added, "The punishment in question, should you stray from your duty, will be that I will not allow you release afterwards. If you succeed in keeping your mind on serving me until my pleasure has come, I will in turn ensure that you receive pleasure. Do you understand?" 

"Yes, sir." His voice grew stronger. "You're creating a connection in my mind between duty and pleasure. My mind will know that, if I do not do my duty, I will not receive pleasure. But sir . . ." His voice grew more tentative. "I'm beginning to feel pleasure from the very act of doing my duty." 

"I realize that. The purpose of this early exercise is to permit you to experience pleasure in close succession to doing your duty. As time goes on, and you become skilled at undertaking one task soon after another task, I will slowly permit the two tasks to overlap – just a little at the beginning, then we will gradually bring them together, so that you may experience pleasure at the same time as you are undertaking your duty to me. In doing so, you will learn to give pleasure at the same time you are receiving it – and incidentally, you will learn how to let a stray thought come into your head without dropping food into the Chairman's lap." 

No smile passed swiftly over Halvar's face, as it might have done at another time. Egon, trying his best to drive back the music and listen to Halvar's words, felt the pain in his thighs spread to his soul. He was not sure why. 

Halvar's eyes were like blue shadows on snow as he looked down at Egon. He said, "One thing I wish you to understand clearly, Egon. With most men, the timing of pleasure in bed is a matter of indifference – if a man plans to give his partner pleasure first and finds instead that his own pleasure has sped ahead, that is unimportant. I should not have to tell you that this matter is of the utmost importance in your case. So hear me now, Egon, and place this command in your mind and your soul: Under no circumstances will you allow your pleasure to come before mine. Under no circumstances. I promise you that the consequences for disobeying that rule would be exceedingly painful." 

"Yes, sir," Egon murmured. Pain was already weighing him down, and the mystery of it remained. He was being given everything he had dreamed of – everything he had never expected to receive. Yet, in the Supervisor's dry, rigid account of Egon's coming service, something was missing. It was as though Egon had been given a beautiful sports-car, only to discover that its motor was absent. 

He became aware that Halvar's eye was upon him, and he shifted in his seat, saying, "I'm sorry, sir. You were speaking of my discipline." 

Halvar did not reply for a long moment. With Egon's new awareness, it seemed to him that the Supervisor looked more tired and older than he had when Egon entered the office. Finally Halvar said, "I was speaking of our love." 

If the music swelled at that moment, Egon took no notice of it; he was busy holding his breath, lest the word he had just heard should vanish, like any other illusion. It was a word he had not dared voice during his account to Halvar of his changed feelings toward the Supervisor – a word too sacred to be spoken. And the Supervisor had said "our." Our love. 

So absorbed was Egon in thought that he did not notice Halvar come forward until the Supervisor's shadow fell over him. Egon could not look up. Then he felt the Supervisor's hand upon him, sliding down the back of his head. It slid over the hairs on the back of Egon's neck. 

Egon closed his eyes; the pounding of his heart was hurting his chest. A space of time passed in which all his soul was centered upon the feel of Halvar's hand. Then he felt his lips touched by a kiss: it was dry, it was brief. Egon dug his nails into his hands to try to hold back the surge that went through him. 

From inches away, Halvar's voice asked quietly, "Do you feel pleasure?" 

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir." His voice was fainter than the rush of air below a car. 

"Your reaction is natural. It will not be long before you learn to put your love first." 

The shadow moved; Egon opened his eyes to see that Halvar had returned to his previous position. Nearly gasping in the effort to drive back what was within him, Egon said the first words that came to him: "I thought . . . We were speaking of my duty, sir, not my pleasure. Not our love." The last sentence was whispered. 

Halvar was still a moment; then he turned and walked over to the water dispenser, carefully checked by Egon each morning to ensure that its workings were in proper order. He pressed the button; a ceramic cup filled with water jumped into his hand. He drained the contents, then stood holding the cup. He still had not looked Egon's way. 

He said, "I knew a man younger than yourself – still under training, living in another household – who fell in love with a woman and married her. His joy was great; he thought it would last forever. And like you, he thought of love as his pleasure. Then, one day, he found that his pleasure had gone. He no longer received enjoyment from the presence of his wife; she no longer made his soul sing." 

He carefully placed the cup into the sterilization unit; the dispenser hummed as it cleaned the cup. Looking down at the machine, Halvar said, "Because he was married, he did not turn to other women, but he quarrelled with his wife, believing that his loss of love must be due to something she had done. He had no other way to account for what had happened. She was patient for a time, but eventually she became soul-broken from his endless lashings of unjust accusations. So she left him for another man." 

The humming stopped; the dispenser was still for a moment, then it started humming again as it dried the cup. Halvar said, "Only after she was gone did the man realize that he still loved her. What he had experienced was not a loss of love, any more than a field's winter sleep is a loss of life. It was simply a fallow period, a time of resting before the pleasure should begin again. But because he had regarded love as a pleasure, not a duty, he had discarded all the fruits of his courting and had destroyed a lifetime's worth of joy." 

Egon said nothing. It might have been his own story Halvar was telling; he remembered now the feeling of emptiness that always came at the conclusion of his love affairs. In the midst of his love affairs, he now recognized, but he had thought that his love for the woman was gone forever, and he had moved on to a new lover. 

He felt a clutching at his soul, and it was not simply because he knew that, had Halvar not pulled him from this path, he might have chased endlessly after love, leaving it behind him time after time as he searched for it in a new place. 

His sudden pain did not come from the past; it came from the realization that it could happen again. And if it did . . . Yesterday he would have thought that failure would mean nothing except that Halvar would tell him in his dry voice to try again. Now he knew better. He knew that he had power over Halvar to hurt him as badly as he had hurt his old lovers. 

He felt panic rise in him, and then it was gone, overcome by resolve. He would not break Halvar's soul. He owed him too much for that. He owed him the duty of his love. 

The dispenser had gone silent again; Halvar turned away from it. Egon waited until Halvar had returned to his former place in front of the desk before asking quietly, "Will you help me with this, sir?" 

Halvar nodded. There was a sheen on his face that had not been there before: sweat that had made its way onto his skin during the past minutes. His voice was calm, though, as he said, "I have in mind an additional discipline, one that I would not normally recommend for anyone entering into a bonding of love. In most cases, love should not be treated as an account plast, with each party keeping tallies of which of them has received pleasure, and when. But your case is special – you know that. So firmly did you train your mind during your earlier years to demand your own pleasure ahead of other people's that we must, I think, go to the opposite extreme in order to break you of that habit." 

"You will deny me all pleasure." Egon's voice was as calm as Halvar's. 

"At periodic intervals. You will receive no prior warning as to my command of withdrawal, nor will you know how long you will be denied pleasure. It could be days, it could be months. This withdrawal will come to you without notice, without sign of hope—" 

"As it will in any case, without your command," Egon said softly. 

Halvar nodded. "A man who has fasted is better prepared to survive, should famine strike. If you had learned to endure without pleasure when you were younger, you would not need this discipline. As it is, I will apply the fast externally until you have learned to command yourself in such matters – until you can continue to follow duty when accompanying pleasure disappears." He raised his eyebrows. "Do you consider this discipline just?" 

"No, sir," Egon said softly. "But I think it's necessary." 

A smile slowly grew on Halvar's face, far slower than it ever had in the past. It lingered, like sunlight on a summer's day, and then, abruptly, it vanished. 

A whisper of metal cut through the air; Halvar's rod, fully extended, reached forward and poked Egon in the groin. Egon flinched. 

"What is that, Egon?" Halvar asked, his voice hard once more. 

Egon had to force himself not to look down at his groin. "Me not giving full attention to what you're saying, sir." 

Halvar sighed; as though this had been a signal, Egon rose to his feet, wincing as his aching thighs slid across the chair. Then he winced again as he thought of that pain increased. 

Halvar stopped him, though, as he put his hand to the buttons of his shirt. "I'll overlook this today," the Supervisor said. "Please do your best to ensure it does not happen again. I would prefer to use the rod infrequently from now on – among other reasons, I do not want to create a connection in your mind between pain and sexual pleasure. That would complicate your discipline considerably." His voice was once more dry. 

"Yes, sir," Egon murmured. He thought that prospect unlikely; the very sight of the rod had killed his desire. He glanced at the pile of plasts on the desk and then sank to his knees, leaning forward to kiss Halvar's hand. He was pleased to find that he could still do this without thinking of himself. 

"Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?" he asked, looking up. 

"Not until tonight," said Halvar with a briskness that was belied by the look in his eyes. 

The Supervisor withdrew his hand and turned away – fortunately for Egon, for whom those words had brought another surge of music. He fought back the song by thinking of the afternoon's scrubbing of toilets that Halvar had assigned to him as additional punishment for the mishap at lunch. By the time evening came, Egon thought ruefully, he doubted that either his mind or his body would be able to rise high enough for him to dwell on thoughts of pleasure. 

He had reached the door when he looked back. Halvar was sitting at his desk, staring at one of the plasts, but his eyes were blank. The sheen of sweat had not yet dried upon his skin. 

"Sir," Egon said quietly, "I'm sorry about your wife." 

Halvar raised his eyes slowly. When he spoke, it was in a voice thicker than usual. "Wherever my training may take you, Egon, I trust that you will not follow me in my folly." 

"No, sir. Thank you, sir." 

He left the Supervisor then to his communit and his datapad and his plasts, and his cold, silent office.


	5. Chapter 5

The evening went much the same as usual. Egon smoothed and laid out Halvar's pajamas and his clothes for the next day, checked that the Supervisor had enough water and other supplies for the night and coming day, and assured himself that not so much as a dust-speck remained on the floor. Then he looked round the room to see whether he had forgotten anything.

Halvar's bedroom, when Egon had first become his valet, had been no different from the quarters where Egon slept with the other male slaves. There had been a cot with sheets, a flat pillow, and a single, thin blanket. There had also been a small trunk in which to keep Halvar's pajamas, day clothes, and toothbrush. Nothing more. Halvar had not even possessed his own bathroom items, beyond the toothbrush; he had shared the communal items used by the other slaves. 

Egon had set out to change this. He was assisted by the disgusting habit of the Chairman's younger son of throwing out anything with which he had grown bored. With Rurik's help, Egon had gradually furnished the room with more comfortable bedding, a table and lamp, and a chest of drawers. Remembering Halvar's ascetic tastes, Egon had provided nothing decorative except a place-rug in one of the regrettable neon colors that Joran favored. 

Egon was kneeling on the place-rug now, trying to steady his breathing, and feeling his stomach's contents swish like a half-filled fuel tank. He had heard Halvar's voice a moment ago, bidding one of the female slaves goodnight as he checked that they were locked in till morning. With Rurik living in the slave-quarters, one could not be too careful, though Egon knew from his own experience that the female slaves had mastered the art of slipping out of their room. 

He tried to keep his mind on his own posture. Usually, this was easy when kneeling on the bare floor of the Supervisor's office; his knees would be knifed with pain by now. But Joran, damn him, favored decadent rugs so soft that they were practically three inches thick. Egon felt no more discomfort than he would have if he had been kneeling on a pile of pillows. 

The door opened; Halvar entered. He showed no surprise at seeing Egon there, at a time of night when Egon was usually ensconced with the other male slaves. He simply closed the door, stepped past Egon, and went over to his bed. He leaned over and began fingering his pajamas. 

After a moment, Egon gathered his wits together. He hastily rose to his feet and went over to where Halvar was waiting. His mouth was dry. 

It was not the first time he had helped Halvar to undress, but always before there had been limits; he had gone no further than the loose underwear Halvar wore. Now, as he finished taking off Halvar's shoes and socks and shirt and belt and trousers, he hesitated. He sensed the Supervisor's eye upon him. 

"Continue." Nothing could be read in Halvar's voice; he might have been discussing Egon's progress in cleaning the bathroom floor. 

Egon got down on his knees. He told himself that this was an easier way to unbutton Halvar's undershirt; but no, he was forced to acknowledge to himself, he was actually hoping that the position would remind him of his place. The damned rug defeated him, though, embracing him with warmth and comfort. He could feel his skin grow hot as he pulled back the undershirt. 

He had expected Halvar's chest to be wrinkled, as were his hands and face, but Halvar had evidently kept himself too well in shape for that. His skin didn't sag; instead, the surface of Halvar's chest stretched smooth against the ribs, outlining the curve of muscle, dipping like a low point in the road as it reached the stomach. Egon, who had intended to rise to help Halvar off with his undershirt, forgot all his plans as he yanked down the Supervisor's shorts to see what lay underneath. The levelness of the stomach gave way to the lower belly, dark with hair, and jutting up from it, already half-hard, was Halvar's cock, the skin red and smooth and warm to the touch. 

"Egon." 

Halvar's voice, sharp, caused Egon to jerk back his hand. He looked up. The Supervisor, left half-dressed by Egon's undue haste, looked down at him darkly. 

"What are you thinking, slave?" Halvar asked softly. 

Egon swallowed and looked down. "Of my pleasure, sir." 

Halvar said nothing; he simply gestured. Egon, choking back a curse, shuffled over to the side of the bed, pulled down his trousers and shorts, and leaned over the bed. Then he waited, hiding his face in his arms so that Halvar would not see the tears brimming in his eyes. 

The tears were not from the pain he expected, though his cock had shrivelled in anticipation of the blows. He had failed. Halvar had given Egon this unhoped-for opportunity to serve him in intimacy, and Egon had failed. He had returned to his old habits; he had slid back into the gutter from which Halvar had first rescued him. 

He could smell the sweat on his arms; then he tasted his tears as the blows began to fall. The pain in his body meant much less to him than the pain in his heart. Why had he tried to fool himself into thinking he had anything to give Halvar? He was no better now than he had been on the day he seduced Karia. 

The blows ended. Egon, keeping his eyes carefully turned away from the Supervisor, knelt up and re-clothed himself, wincing as the cloth slid across the bruised skin. Still keeping his gaze averted, he stood and made his way to the door. 

"Egon." 

He turned slowly. The Supervisor, who had rid himself of the shorts around his ankles but not of the open undershirt, was sitting on the edge of the bed, his legs wide open. Egon just managed to keep from staring down at what lay between the legs. 

Halvar beckoned. Egon, trying to ignore the renewed quickness of his own breath, came forward, kneeling just short of the rug next to the bed. 

Halvar did not remark on this. Instead, he asked, "What went wrong?" 

Egon took a deep breath, trying to take in what was happening. All was not lost. He would be given a second chance. 

"The rug, sir," he said finally. 

Halvar raised his eyebrows. Egon explained. By the time he was finished, Halvar's lips had a faint twist to them that Egon identified, after an incredulous moment, as amusement. 

"Stay where you are," was all that the Supervisor remarked. 

Egon stayed. He could hear nothing except the faint hum of the heater; whatever else might be said of the Chairman, he always kept the temperature in the slave-quarters at a comfortable level, one that would allow a slave to strip down for work or play without growing cold. Halvar seemed contented to stay sitting half-naked for the entire night. 

Egon, on the other hand, was beginning to feel agony. He could tell, from the electronic clock built into the lamp, that fifteen minutes had passed since the Supervisor had issued his order. Egon had never before knelt this long in front of Halvar, for Halvar kept his remonstrations mercifully short. Egon tried to shift his knees, seeking a more comfortable position, then froze as he saw Halvar raise his eyebrows. Egon had been ordered to stay where he was. 

After thirty minutes had passed, Egon finally broke. "Sir, please .. ." he begged. 

Halvar beckoned. Egon gratefully rose, nearly fell from the agony that swept through his legs, and ended up on his knees in front of Halvar. The rug embraced him like an old, comfortable friend. Egon sent up voiceless words of gratitude to Joran for his decadent tastes. 

His thoughts must have been stamped clearly on his face; the side of Halvar's mouth twitched. The Supervisor kept his voice serious, though, as he said, "Henceforth, you will be kneeling for much longer periods than you have in the past. Give me credit for thinking these things through beforehand." 

"Yes, sir." 

"And place a rug like this in my office tomorrow, in front of my desk." 

"Yes, sir," he said with such manifest gratitude that Halvar finally did laugh. Reaching out, he wrapped his palm around Egon's nape. 

"Now," Halvar said, "serve me." 

o—o—o

Halvar's thighs were thick with coarse, curly hair, but as Egon licked the strands, they flattened out into moist paths, like the trail left on a rainy road after an aircar has passed. 

Egon, stripped of his clothes as he knelt on the bed, paused to contemplate the hair, glistening under the ceiling light. Then he raised his eyes. Halvar's cock stood at an angle, like a gear-shift in readiness. 

"Sir," said Egon, "are you sure that you don't want me to take care of that?" 

Halvar, who had been contemplating some invisible spot on the glowing ceiling, sighed and punched his pillow several times till his head was propped up enough to allow him to look down at his valet. "Egon," he said, "that is the third time you have asked that question. Have you never heard of the word 'foreplay'?" 

Egon felt his ears grow warm. "Yes, sir. It's what women like—" He stopped, too late, and felt the heat of his blush cover his face, his neck, his chest . . . Soon it would be down to his toes. 

Halvar merely looked amused again. "A taste for foreplay is not unknown among men, you know." 

"Yes, sir," he mumbled. Then, feeling his way awkwardly through this pass, "I'm afraid . . . I don't have much experience with men, I'm afraid. I mean, I have none at all." 

"Ah." Halvar's voice was light. "Well, my own experience is somewhat limited as well. The most useful piece of information I learned in my younger days was that I must not assume that my partner's desires match my own." 

"Yes, sir. Foreplay." 

His voice must have sounded bleak; Halvar gave a quirk of a smile, but mercifully did not laugh at him. "Continue." 

"Right away, sir." He bent to his task. Egon's cock, which had taken some interest in the proceedings back when it looked as though he might be fucked soon, had long since nodded off, as though falling asleep. Nothing distracted Egon now from the tedious task of licking his way up the full length of Halvar's thigh. 

At least Halvar had shown enough consideration to order Egon to place a glass of water close at hand. Egon paused to moisten his mouth before he proceeded forward. He could smell the musky scent of Halvar's balls; it was becoming difficult to avoid touching any part of the forbidden territory. He glanced up. The head of Halvar's cock was glistening, like a car's moisture-tube that is ready to steam over from the heat. 

"Sir—" He bit off the remainder of his sentence. Halvar, he knew, would simply say what he had said before, that Egon must learn the importance of prolonging pleasure. That Halvar's own pleasure might be turning to frustration, the Supervisor would not admit, as long as a lesson remained to be learned. 

There is a time to be patient, Egon decided, and there is a time to do one's duty. Without letting himself worry about the consequences of his act, he said, "Sorry, sir, but I think that part of my service to you is to judge when you're ready for my service. I think you're ready now." And with no more warning than that, he took Halvar into his mouth. 

He had not planned this. Although he had not previously dared daydream of anything more than serving Halvar with his mouth, he had assumed, on this evening, that Halvar would want more. He had not admitted to himself how much he wanted that something more – to feel Halvar atop him, entering him, plunging his way deep into Egon's body. 

Now the best he could do was let Halvar enter his mouth, but judging from the noises that Halvar was making, that was enough. Keeping his mind on his duty was no problem this time; Egon had never done this before, and coordinating his lips and jaws and tongue, without allowing his teeth past the barrier of his lips, turned out to be as tricky a job as tuning a car. He ran his tongue along the winding path of Halvar's big vein, reaching up with his hand to stroke and then gently knead the Supervisor's balls. Car-tuning, he decided, was not nearly as intricate as tuning Halvar's body. The car, for example, did not buck its hips at the very moment that Egon was sliding Halvar's cock into his throat. He just managed to keep from choking as he slipped his hands under Halvar's ass and began squeezing the Supervisor's cheeks. 

"Never . . . done this . . . before?" The Supervisor's gasped remark was incredulous. Egon allowed himself only a brief moment to feel the pleasure of the compliment; then his mind snapped back into concentration as Halvar began to push into his throat with unsteady rhythm. Groping, Egon managed to move one of his hands back to Halvar's balls in the very moment they contracted. He squeezed. 

"Motherfucking—!" The rest of Halvar's hitherto unheard curse was lost as the Supervisor rammed his body hard into Egon's mouth and throat. Egon, who was beginning to feel faint from lack of air, remained still, swallowing what gushed down his throat. 

Then the Supervisor collapsed, like a car in the Capital 50,000 that has reached the finishing line and can race no further. 

Egon carefully pulled himself back, staring down at Halvar's body. There was nothing to clean up; Egon had not allowed a single drop to spill from his mouth. He could taste the bitterness of the few drops of Halvar's come that had lingered on the cock as it emerged. Egon carefully swallowed them and moved further back. Halvar's cock still glistened with the moisture of Egon's mouth, but it had shrunk down, and Egon guessed that he would be better off allowing the now-sensitive cock to dry in the air. 

He hesitated, looking at the Supervisor, whose eyes were closed. In the old days, Egon had always preferred sleeping alone when it was over. Should he tiptoe out of the room? 

He heard Halvar's voice in his mind, saying, "I must not assume that my partner's desires match my own." 

"Sir?" he said softly, afraid that Halvar had already drifted to sleep. 

Halvar did not open his eyes. He merely reached out, found Egon's arm, and tugged. Egon allowed himself to be pulled down beside Halvar. As he did so, the table-lamp, hooked into the automatic timing system, silently turned out. 

There was no battery-powered lamp in the room tonight. Egon reached out and pulled the sheet and blanket over Halvar. He himself was beginning to feel chilly from the sweat of his exertions, but he tucked the blanket between himself and Halvar, uncertain of how far the Supervisor would allow their intimacy to grow. 

"Egon," murmured Halvar. 

"Sir?" 

"I possess certain skills, but touching your body while a blanket is between us is not one of them. Release me, please." 

"Yes, sir." He hastily pulled the blanket far enough back to permit contact, wondering, as he did, what Halvar had in mind. Surely he had not done anything bad enough to merit another taste of the rod? 

Halvar's hand took hold of Egon's cock. 

Egon squeaked like a badly oiled wheel. Halvar chuckled. "Had you forgotten that this part came next?" 

"Yes, sir," he gasped, and Halvar, who had begun to give Egon's cock the quick strokes that it liked, paused in his ministrations. 

"You really mean that," said the Supervisor. 

"Yes, sir," he replied slowly, wonder overtaking him. 

Halvar's grip tightened. "Good," the Supervisor said. "Very good indeed for the first night. I'm pleased with you, Egon." 

The words, much more than the grip, caused him to whimper; he just managed to keep from thrusting himself against Halvar's hand. Halvar chuckled again, lightly. 

"Let yourself go," he ordered. "You've done your service; now I can allow you your pleasure." 

There was something not quite right about what Halvar said, but Egon could not identify the wrongness, for he was pushing, whining, driving himself hard down the road he had never thought to travel, in all these years of late-night dreamings. 

o—o—o

Afterwards, in the quiet of the dark, he lay still, trying to recall what it was that he had almost known in the moments before his coming. He could not remember, but surely the memory would return to him, at a later stage. He had no doubts now that he would make further progress. 

"What are you thinking?" The Supervisor's voice was soft. 

"I—" He paused. He had been thinking how he wanted this to last till the end of his life; but that was a selfish thought. Halvar, he now knew, wanted him as much as he wanted Halvar, but the Supervisor felt duty-bound to tie in this lovemaking with Egon's education. Doubtless, once Egon's education was completed, Halvar would once more feel obliged to sleep alone in his cold bed. It would be cruel to remind Halvar of that eventuality, or to try to coax him into promises he could not keep. 

So instead Egon said, "I hope that I've made you a little happy, sir." 

Halvar's hand, glowing with his datachip, touched Egon's cheek. He turned Egon's head. In the dim light, Egon could just barely see the bright sparks of Halvar's eyes. 

"My dearest boy," Halvar said, "your service has given me more happiness than I can hold in a lifetime." Halvar leaned forward and kissed Egon, and his kiss was not at all dry. 

Egon kissed back, knowing that he had reached the stage where his initiative would receive open reward. Halvar was right, he decided. They had both received more happiness than either of them deserved: Egon the seducer, and Halvar, with the blood of Egon's parents still on his hands. They were both, in their own way, helping to uphold a system of injustice and pain, and though they did their best to soften their blows, other slaves would suffer from the decision of the Supervisor and his valet to carry out the Chairman's orders. That Halvar and Egon, imperfect men struggling to survive in an imperfect world, had been permitted even a little time of happiness. . . wasn't that reason enough to be grateful? 

There was no need to be greedy for more. Egon would take whatever time he was permitted with Halvar, and would trust his renewed strength to see him through their time of separation.


	6. Chapter 6

The disaster, when it came four years later, was unexpected.

When Egon had pledged himself to serve Halvar in love, he had shaped his expectations by the memories of his time with his previous lovers: night after night spent trying out new positions in bed, of building up music through lips and tongues and members. 

He had forgotten that he was an older man now, and Halvar older still. On most nights, it turned out, Egon's duties in Halvar's bed were of the simplest sort: Egon would lie beside the Supervisor and tell Halvar humorous tales of his day's duties until the tension that the older man acquired from his own duties began to seep from his body, and Halvar could sleep. 

On many nights, though exhausted from his own day-work, Egon would spend a long while looking at Halvar's face by the light of Egon's datachip, his soul filled with that strange mixture of deference and tenderness that can only be felt by a servant who has been permitted to see his master's vulnerability. 

Egon guessed that these quiet moments together meant as much to Halvar as they did to him. They had both been alone for too long, and Halvar had not even received the comfort of friendship during his thirty-five years as the belowstairs master. For both of them – the servant and the man being served – an intense joy had grown. For Egon, the feelings were so strong that he need only glance across the kitchen and catch sight of Halvar to feel his heart race. 

There were fallow times as well, as Halvar had predicted. The first of these fallow times came under Halvar's careful guidance, in the period of his choosing, so that when the more natural moment of grey emptiness entered Egon, he was able, with a struggle, to differentiate it from a loss of love for Halvar. Slowly Egon was replenishing all the knowledge he had discarded during his years of training his mind to place his own pleasure above all other happiness. It had become a matter of routine for him now to be sustained through his daily drudgery by the knowledge of the pleasure he brought Halvar. 

Even on the occasional days when he served Halvar with his body, he found that it was not as hard as he had feared it would be to keep his mind focussed on Halvar's pleasure. For his part, Halvar had not hesitated to keep his promise to allow Egon his own pleasure, provided that he kept his mind on his duties. On only a few occasions during the four years had Halvar felt the need to punish him by withdrawing that privilege. 

Those punishments had been caused by careless but momentary breaks in Egon's concentration; the punishments had been brief, in consonance with the offenses. But now, as Egon knelt before Halvar on the day of their reunion after a three-month separation, he realized with horror that he was about to commit the ultimate offense. 

He had no time in which to restrain himself; already he had pulled back, and his mouth was open in a hoarse cry that echoed through the near-empty room. At that moment all he could feel was the music singing through his blood, as it had in the old days. 

And then it drained out of him, as a tune badly sung dies on the tongue of its singer. For a minute he could not look up. He could feel shame washing over him, like the sweat chilling upon his body, and he bit his lip to keep back the sounds there. Finally he raised his gaze. 

Halvar was sitting where he had been before, on the edge of the desk. He had rebuttoned his trousers and shirt, and he was looking down at Egon without any expression. In his hand was the rod. 

The rod was still closed, but Egon felt all of his chill shame replaced by a flame of terror. He forced his gaze to the floor and whispered, "Sir, I'm sorry." 

"I sensed that was coming." Halvar's voice was conversational. "Your thoughts were not on what you were doing, were they? Not from the moment you began." 

"No, sir." He could not seem to raise his voice above a whisper. 

Halvar gave a deep sigh. "You had been doing so well, Egon. Ah well, let us determine where you went astray, so that we can identify where your discipline needs to be focussed in the coming months. Was it the touch of my hand that distracted you? Or the fact that I told you how much I welcomed your return?" 

"Sir, no; it's nothing you did for me. I just— I hadn't expected—" He fell silent, staring with intensity at the stain he had created. 

"Egon," Halvar said, his voice harder than before, "you know that it is not wrong for you to experience pleasure. I will be punishing you, not for the pleasure you felt, but for the fact that you placed your pleasure above your duty and allowed your thoughts to stray from what you were doing. If you are to prevent this disobedience from occurring again, you must be willing to admit to yourself how it is that your mind strayed from your duty. How did pleasure master you, Egon? What holds you bound and prevents you from giving yourself over wholly to me, as you wish to do?" 

"Sir," Egon said, his voice cracking, "I don't know. All I know is that I was thinking of how much you were enjoying what I was doing. That was why I came to pleasure before I had received your permission to do so." 

In the silence that followed he thought, _Oh God, he will beat me twice as hard for this._ The words he had spoken were so unlikely that Halvar could not possibly believe him: Egon would be beaten, not only for his disobedience, but for lying. He imagined the number of strokes he would receive, and his flesh shrivelled onto his bones. 

Then he felt Halvar's hand, hard as a rod, gripping him and pulling him up. Without a word, the Supervisor pushed him backwards till he was forced onto the desk – not facedown, as he had expected, but into a sitting position. 

He tried to guess what this change of position might denote, and the inner answer he received made him begin to shiver. "You'll beat my chest?" he asked, his voice still restrained to a whisper. 

"Beat you?" Halvar gave a quirk of a smile, glanced at the rod he held in his hand, and tossed it away. It landed in the corner with a dull clang. 

"As far as I know," the Supervisor said, "beatings are not a traditional way to celebrate the end of a man's training." 

Egon stared at Halvar, unable to make sense of the words that had been spoken. Halvar's smile broadened, and he leaned forward. Looking Egon in the eye – for Egon's position placed him at the same height as the Supervisor – Halvar said, "Egon, seven years ago I told you, 'When the day comes that you understand the true meaning of pleasure, then you will no longer need to bind your pleasure.' Do you remember that?" 

Egon nodded slowly; the older man waited. Finally, after several minutes had passed, Egon said, "True pleasure – that comes from giving to another person, without thought of reward. Now that my pleasure is no longer turned within but faces outward, it's safe for me to experience pleasure. Now my pleasure will be forever bound with giving to others." 

"Seven years," said Halvar. "God help us, you did it in seven years. It took me nigh on twenty years to bind my pleasure into giving rather than receiving. As I'd suspected, you inherited your mother's talent for service." 

Egon released his breath slowly, so as not to disturb the quiet music that had been building within him – building for seven years, he now recognized. It had entered into him so quietly that he had not understood until now its significance. He thought of what had come before – the jarring notes he had tried to force out through his fumbling demands to be pleasured by others – and he could have laughed at the absurdity of it. 

"Joran is due to meet with me this evening," Halvar commented. "We'll have to finish this now. There's just one more thing I need to do tonight. I've been wanting to do this for the past four years, but I didn't dare do so till you were ready." 

"Sir?" said Egon uncertainly. "What—? Oh, sir." His voice turned to a whisper as he realized the significance of his position. 

Halvar was already sinking to one knee; he smiled up at Egon. "You're more fortunate than me," he commented. "I've never had the opportunity to do this. I'm depending on you to tell me whether I do it correctly." He bowed his head. 

Egon placed his hand on Halvar's head, then slid his palm down onto the back of Halvar's bare neck. He knew instinctively that he should be putting as much concentration into this as he had when he had knelt before, but he found his mind straying to the young slave who would appear here shortly. He realized now, as he had not done earlier, why it was that Halvar had placed him in power over the ill-disciplined youth, and why it was that Halvar had been disappointed that Egon had made so little use of that power. Egon had wasted his three months with Joran; he might have used that time to teach the young man how duty and pleasure could be combined into something greater than pleasure alone. 

Well, there would be others he could help – Rurik, for example – and doing so would prove a new challenge: a lesson in how to transform receiving into a form of giving. He turned his thoughts to the man who would teach him that, and he felt the gratitude swell within him in a song of supreme pleasure.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Editor:_ [Remy Hart](http://remyheart.livejournal.com/profile).
> 
>  _Editorial assistants:_ [Hope of Dawn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn), Jo/e Noakes, [Parhelion](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion), and [Yingtai](http://archiveofourown.org/users/yingtai/pseuds/yingtai). 
> 
> [Publication history](http://duskpeterson.com/cvhep.htm#pleasure).
> 
> This text, or a variation on it, was originally published at [duskpeterson.com](http://duskpeterson.com) as part of the series Master/Other. Copyright © 2003, 2009, 2012, 2014 Dusk Peterson. Some rights reserved. The text is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0). You may freely print, post, e-mail, share, or otherwise distribute the text for noncommercial purposes, provided that you include this paragraph. The [author's policies on fan works](http://duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm) are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm).


End file.
